[majormajor]

It's also key to note that had Cable NOT pushed ads as far as they had, they still would have been disrupted. It was a rational decision, since revenue today is often worth more than in the uncertain-for-so-many-reasons future.

It's part of why you can't rely on the market or competitive forces alone, if you think something is an issue of public good, you need regulation.

[neltnerb]

If they didn't show ads I doubt they would have cared as much about time shifting and ad skipping would never have been relevant. Sure would have helped them avoid collapsing.

Let's not pretend they weren't incredibly hostile to watching shows you're paying for already, when you want to and without the ads you paid to avoid, even though they didn't need to even build any infrastructure for it.

Add the rest of their anti-customer policies like bundling channels and it seems clear that their campaign to get rid of all their cable customers simply succeeded.

[majormajor]

And none of that would've prevented Netflix from being a more convenient option that let you watch on many more devices, etc. Especially because the early hook here for Netflix streaming wasn't "watch the stuff currently on cable" it was "watch back catalog stuff that isn't anywhere else right now." So that would still get Netflix in the door, and then once they start doing first-run content, game over in the same way. Nobody would want to buy and set up Tivos or Slingboxes and LAN setups and all just to turn their existing cable subscription into a Netflix subscription when they could just buy the streaming subscription separately.

Sure, the cable companies could've theoretically made Netflix streaming before Netflix did - and the broadcast networks kinda-sorta-tried-this with Hulu - but that had nothing to do with their ad load increasing over time. Hulu was way more convenient than watching the same shows on cable even with ads still! But to go all in on a reinvention towards streaming would've been a huge gamble even seeing the streaming train coming right at them.

[wolco2]

Those time shifting shows appear on broadcast tv across the nation in different time zones. They are not cable channels but broadcast channels appearing in cable. A tv antenia will pick them up.

The timeshifting is the tv stations defense of segmenting their ad market and protecting against local viewer loss that targets ads to markets.

If you in New York watch Denver's version two things happen. New York loses viewers. Denver gains viewers who's local ads are not relevant and those viewers not included when selling ads.

[neltnerb]

Sorry, there must be some overlapping terminology.

I mean time shifting as in what devices such as TiVo did where they would record your shows for you and allow them to play them back whenever you wanted. For some reason Cable companies really hated this idea, presumably because... ads I guess?

I think that if they simply hadn't fought against people trying to basically turn what they already provided into something more like Netflix, those tools would exist and be built with a cable package as a backend.

They provide all the shows in a datastream that they would otherwise provide via cable, let other people deal with paying for developing devices to make it easier to use, and price it more reasonably so that it can compete with a Netflix. I don't know if they'd be able to, but since they own the pipes and own the FCC it seems more likely than not. But they'd be doing a lot better than they seem to be now, they just priced themselves out of the market once networks realized that people would just download their content for free if it was too inconvenient to watch. Better a little than nothing...