Thursday, March 25, 2021

Streaming services gutting TV more and more

 Back in 2019, I had one blog post, then a follow-up, refudiating claims that teevee was about to face anywhere near the future financial problems of newspapers.

The initial post was based on a comment on Quora by a local-level TV programming engineer claiming "we're doing fine." I had multiple links showing local TV news viewership, a prime source of local TV ad dollars, was already declining. I had another link showing the age demographic for local TV news watching wasn't that much different than for newspapers.

In the follow-up, I noted how job cuts have affected local TV news broadcasting.

Meanwhile, national TV has had a new threat arise since then: streaming by Netflix and others. (COVID has brought yet another possible threat — movie streaming. Yeah, it's primarily a deal for movie theaters, but if it jacks movie viewing higher than before, that's extra personal entertainment time that has to be lost by another entertainment source.)

I update these ideas because streaming has come to pro sports.

And, not just any pro sport but the NFL.

And, and not just any streaming outlet but Amazon, otherwise known as Yellow Satan.

So, production engineer guy? Stop whistling in the dark.

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