Random Rant: Why People are Abandoning Cable

I just finished reading an opinion piece titled Why Are People Abandoning Cable TV?, in which Graeme McMillan argues that the drop-off of cable subscription rates is in large-part due to viewers choosing to watch shows online.  He sites the lower prices of services like Hulu Plus, but really doesn't delve any deeper into the matter.  I think that there are more forces driving viewers away from cable subscription and towards the internet for their "TV" viewing, and the biggest might not be the price differential.

It is my opinion, that a major factor is that the networks have severely underestimated the intelligence of the viewing public, and this coupled with a tendency for networks to move from disparate discrete demographics to a  homogenized mish-mash of me-too programming has put off the majority of cable subscribers.  The bottom third who might otherwise watch this drivel can see the same kinds of programming from their local TV stations, and likely can't afford the pricey cable fees anyway.

I remember a time when new cable stations were coming out, each to fit a entertainment niche that wasn't being filled by one of the big broadcast networks, like MTV that provided music videos and concerts, A&E that gave viewers slightly higher-brow programs compared to broadcast stations, HBO which brought recent movie releases into the subscriber's home,later the  Discovery Channel brought science, nature and educational shows to cable audiences, and later still the History Channel brought viewers historical documentaries and dramas.  Now, the same types of programs as one might find on NBC will be broadcast on HBO, A&E and MTV.  The History Channel is more likely to have a credulous program on UFOs as to have a documentary about the Boer War, and Discovery is more likely to be showing ghosts than it is it's only hold-out from the good old days, Mythbusters.

In fact one can click through channel after channel and see the same show, with slightly different names.  Since viewers can see this kind of show on broadcast TV, there's nothing to keep them paying the high subscriber services.  But it gets better than that, because the internet allows users to find the programs they really like, and there's a lot of good content out there.  Hulu, Netflix, and iTunes makes it easy to find any of the few network shows you might like to view, either free, or for much less than you'd end up paying for cable, and services like YouTube, Fora.tv, and TED.com provide content across a wide spectrum, that one simply cannot find on television.