Cable TV Dying. What Does the Future Look Like?

My childhood consisted of afternoons after school watching blocks of television. Usually, I would be able to flip through cable networks and find a variety of shows. Wether it was reruns of sitcoms on TBS, crappy dating shows on MTV, or gameshows from my childhood on Nickelodeon GAS, there always seemed to be something suitable to watch.

Looking at cable schedules today, there’s nothing. Many of the same shows run for hours on end. There are very few original shows being aired on cable television, and afternoons often feel like an endless binge of repeats. With all of the options available to people, why would anyone want to tune into TBS for five straight hours of Family Guy?

In a world where streaming seems to be the future, network television still seems to have a place. If you keep scrolling up, you’ll enter a television graveyard known as cable. Whether this is simply a change in structure or a sign of death isn’t inherently clear. But anyone who wants to cut the cord is unlikely to change their minds based on the current cable offerings.

What Happened to Cable Television

There was a time when the structure of cable TV was very different than network TV. Often, a network show would air once. Before the eras of streaming and DVR, you would need to tune into the original broadcast to catch the show. If you missed an episode, you’d either need to wait for a summer rerun or forgo the show all together.

Cable was different. They’d rerun shows, usually within 24 hours of the original broadcast. If you missed the most recent episode of South Park in 2004, TV Guide would list the times throughout the week when Comedy Central would play it again. If you missed The Simpsons on Fox, you’d be waiting a lot longer for the rerun.

DVR started to change this dynamic. Viewers could easily record episodes, fast forward through commercials, and watch whenever they had time. This makes the experience convenient for the viewer, but it also impacts advertisements. New episodes would slowly lose their luster because missing the original broadcast didn’t mean viewers would need to wait for a rerun.

Now, watching cable is like watching network television. If you want a rerun, you can use…