TV is Dying

This year has been the worst year for TV ever. People are unsubscribing from both their cable and broadband stations. Time Warner Cable lost 306,000 subscribers this year. CEO of charter communications told a Wall Street analysts that 1.3 million of the total 5.5 millions customers at Charter Communications don't want TV anymore.

The growth of TV has almost always stayed below 0% for the past two years(Graph by Citi Analyst Jason Bazinet).

Ratings are failing for almost all major TV stations, this isn't a problem with shows. This is because people aren't interested in what is being shown on TV anymore. I think people don't have the attention span to deal with TV shows anymore; at least not when they have the internet or smartphones that can pull up 801,000 separate pieces of information in .66 seconds.

Cable TV is about to dip below 40 million subscribers, this will be the lowest amount of subscribers in cable history.

The fact is that people don't need TV anymore. They can find almost anything on TV on their smart phones. They have Youtube or Netflix for their videos and TV shows. Then there are apps that alert people of significant news stories. The news is delivered to them by their phones instead of their mailmen and women.

TV stations are also not helping themselves. They are raising the prices to subscribe. The dwindling number of subscribers are having to pay more, and eventually they wont want to keep paying the high rates.

I don't know if it is good or bad that TV is slowly dying. I am a huge fan of some shows like Homeland, Breaking Bad, and SNL but I love some of the newest TV schemes like Netflix. Through Netflix I have been able to watch what I want, when I want. I don't have to wait for a weekly episodes on TV. Some shows on Netflix come out with the whole season in one go. The most recent season of Arrested Development was released at once. As an avid viewer of Arrested Development, I loved that Netflix decided to do that.

I think one of the huge reasons that TV is dying is because TV can't supply the viewer with their expectations of demand. Today, more than ever, people want things quick and easy. TV is so scheduled that it can't meet the viewers demands any more, therefore it is dying slowly but steadily. Do you think TV stations will do anything to combat this decline? How do you think they will? Do you still enjoy watching TV? or have you changed into an internet person?