You may have heard the term cord-cutter – someone who cancels their cable TV subscription. Recently, more and more people have been cutting the cord, but why?
The traditional cable experience is out-dated and limited. Viewers are confined to the living room, flipping through hundreds of channels, hoping that they have tune in at just the right moment. Furthermore, customers have been forced to purchase bloated TV bundles instead of choosing which channels they want.
In 2014, viewers want to watch what they want, when they want, and how they want – all for a reasonable price. People fed up with cable TV providers are turning to online services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime for exactly these reasons.
(Source: Experian Marketing Services)
Netflix is definitely the biggest game-changer in the new era of on-demand TV streaming. For a fixed monthly rate, consumers can watch anything in Netflix’s library anytime on their smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, game consoles, or set-top boxes. Netflix has an app orwebsite for virtually every platform out there – their ease of accessibility is one of the reasons they have been so successful.
One downfall of Netflix is that the library made available to Canadians is still relatively small. You won’t be able to find every recent TV show or the latest DVD release. The US version offers more content due to licensing deals, but is still noticeably bare. However, the company has been investing in original programming and has been successful with hits like Orange Is The New Black and House of Cards.
Canadians can also use Google Play and iTunes to individually buy or rent movies and TV shows. Our neighbours to the south have other services available to them: Hulu, a TV-focused streaming site, and Amazon Prime, another streaming site like Netflix.
Younger and more tech-savvy consumers illegally download shows and movies because it’s the fastest and easiest way to access the content they want. If more companies follow the footsteps of Netflix and offer reasonable prices for a great viewing experience, online pirating may decrease since Canadians would have more legitimate on-demand TV options. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings claims that “[In Canada] Bittorrenttraffic’s down by about 50 percent since Netflix launched three years ago.”
It will be a long time until we see cable TV truly die, but trends are leaning towards online services that we can watch on all our devices.
References
http://www.businessinsider.com/cord-cutters-and-the-death-of-tv-2013-11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/netflix-cable_n_5168725.html
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