Blog Post #9: EOTO 2 (Cord Cutting)

    Cord cutting is the practice of canceling a cable revision subscription or landline phone connection in favor of an alternative internet-based or wireless service. This could be like someone who gets rid of cable to use streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime as their primary access to TV. Cord cutting really started in 2007- 2008 because of the big three of streaming sites being released. In 2008 Amazon Unbox rebranded to Amazon Video, and that would become very popular. In 2007 Netflix launched, and Hulu became available to the public in 2008. The reasons people do this can vary, but most people agree that the cable price is the biggest reason they cut the cord. An article I read averaged that the average some were paying for a bundle that had cable in it was $217.42 per month. So it is not surprising that people want to cut that bill down. Though this is the main reason, there are others, like the fact that people saw cable as lower valued because it does not have as much stuff as streaming sites have. 

    The biggest implication of cording cutting is the end of traditional TV as we know it. This can be seen in the fact that there is an effect on the revenue that is coming in from cable TV. One article I read talked about how streaming will have a dramatic effect on U.S. pay TV revenues by 2025. The article says that the industry will lose around $33 billion by the time 2025 rolls around. That is a large amount of profit, and it could show a slow beginning to the end of cable television as we know it. I think you can look at this implication of cord-cutting as good or bad, depending on how you feel. You can see the end of cable television as a good thing because you support streaming sites more and you find it more valuable, but then there's a side that cable television is a huge industry, and it would be a huge loss.

    There are two major groups that cord-cutting affects: the TV industry and the consumers. The first group is the TV industry because cable TV was once one of the biggest money makes in the industry, and now it is slowly dying out. There was an article I read that talked about the slow fade of cable. It talked about how is one point, cable was the big thing in the market, and now it is streaming platforms. The exact wording was “media companies that once relied on cable TV are chasing streaming dollars instead.” The best example I read about was Disney and the changes they have made over the years in the TV industry. In 2001, Disney brought the Fox Family Channel for $5.3 billion, and now last year, in 2021, Disney spent around $3.2 billion on their streaming site Disney plus. This shows a change in where the money is going in the industry, which could lead to the end of cable television as we know it. 

     The second group is the consumers of cable TV, and the biggest effect that cord cutting has on them has to do with money, and it is both positive and negative. The positive is the more prominent effect, which is that people can cut their cable bills in half. People who would be paying upwards of $100 a month for the service can get something like YouTube TV, which gives the same amount of access to cable channels but for only $25 a month. This is huge, and it could mean a lot of good things for people who can't pay a lot for access to TV. The negative was a small percentage of people talking about how having to pay for so many different services to get what you could end up costing you as much as cable does.