Bevil Wood­ing

As me­dia com­pa­nies in­creas­ing­ly make their wares avail­able on­line, a grow­ing num­ber of sub­scribers are turn­ing in their ca­ble TV box­es and tak­ing con­trol of their TV and movie view­ing rou­tine.

More peo­ple than ever are cut­ting their ca­ble ser­vice ties, and opt­ing to ei­ther cut the cord en­tire­ly, or to pare down their ca­ble pack­age. In the past four years along, ac­cord­ing to Nielsen's da­ta, the top 40 US ca­ble chan­nels have lost an av­er­age of 3.2 mil­lion sub­scribers.

These "cord-cut­ters" are will­ing to low­er or elim­i­nate their month­ly ca­ble bill and get their TV and movie fix by watch­ing shows on a chan­nel's Web site, down­load­ing them from Ap­ple iTunes, or Ama­zon In­stant Video, or even wait­ing for them to show up on stream­ing ser­vices like Net­flix and Hu­lu.

What we are wit­ness­ing is the fu­ture of tele­vi­sion. In this emerg­ing new or­der, the view­er is be­ing en­dowed with greater con­trol over what is watched and when it's watched.

The fu­ture is plat­forms, not chan­nels

We are al­ready see­ing the rise of "on-de­mand" on­line stream­ing plat­forms at the ex­pense of tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion chan­nels. Stream­ing ser­vices are the chan­nels of the fu­ture. These ser­vices, of­fered by com­pa­nies such as Net­flix, Plu­toTV, Ama­zon, Vudu, Hu­lu and YouTube, pro­vide ac­cess to fa­vorite shows and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad-free, binge view­ing on the sub­scribers' terms, not on a ca­ble chan­nel's sched­ule.

Low­er­ing In­ter­net ser­vice prices and in­creas­ing broad­band speeds are to­geth­er mak­ing makes cord cut­ting a more re­al­is­tic op­tion for re­plac­ing ca­ble and switch­ing to stream­ing video. The trend is al­so be­ing sweet­ened by a grow­ing cat­a­log of on-de­mand shows and evening orig­i­nal con­tent be­ing of­fered by providers like Net­flix and Ama­zon.

It al­so helps that most stream­ing ser­vices can be ac­cessed by es­sen­tial­ly any de­vice with an in­ter­net con­nec­tion. This give view­ers new op­tions for con­sum­ing their fa­vorite con­tent, rang­ing from large-screen smart TVs to Blu-ray play­ers, gam­ing con­soles, tablets, smart­phones and set top de­vices like Roku Stream­ing Stick, Ap­ple TV, and Ama­zon FireTV.

In­ter­net: the new ca­ble

Any cord cut­ter look­ing to switch to stream­ing ser­vices will need to in­vest in a de­cent In­ter­net con­nec­tion. Af­ter all, hav­ing Net­flix and no broad­band is sort of like buy­ing a bi­cy­cle with­out wheels.

This is good news for ca­ble ser­vice providers who al­so hap­pen to be In­ter­net ser­vice providers. In fact, in­dus­try and so­cial trends all point to the re­al­i­ty that the sur­vival of ca­ble com­pa­nies doesn't lie in tele­vi­sion, but in the in­ter­net.

"The cord cut­ting trend is a big prob­lem for the movie in­dus­try, be­cause Hol­ly­wood is still spend­ing more than 70 per cent of their bud­gets on lin­ear TV, but the young movie au­di­ence who is re­spon­si­ble for the biggest chunk of the box of­fice is spend­ing a lot more time on­line–for ex­am­ple, on YouTube and Face­book–and this trend is ac­cel­er­at­ing rapid­ly," says Croy�, CEO of Just­Watch, a stream­ing search en­gine de­signed just for cord cut­ters.

"So the movie in­dus­try will have to fol­low the eye­balls mo­bile and on­line and try to find their tar­get au­di­ence for new movie re­leas­es in a frag­ment­ed on­line and mo­bile world," he added in a re­cent TechCrunch in­ter­view.

To ad­dress this frag­ment­ed fu­ture, ser­vice providers are al­ready be­gin­ning to of­fer bun­dles that al­low con­sumers who pay for high-speed in­ter­net to ac­cess sub­scrip­tions to on-de­mand TV and movie con­tent from a di­verse num­ber of on­line ser­vices, across a range of de­vices, with­out hav­ing ca­ble at all.

Promise with pit­falls

But, for all its ben­e­fits, cord cut­ting does have its draw­backs.

Even if you don't or can't watch all that you're pay­ing for with your ca­ble sub­scrip­tion, it is still hard to beat the con­ve­nience and quan­ti­ty of con­tent ca­ble TV of­fers. Most on­line ser­vices still can't match the sim­plic­i­ty of turn­ing on the TV, punch­ing in a num­ber and in­stant­ly watch­ing a show.

Be­cause of con­tent li­cens­ing re­stric­tions, cord cut­ters out­side of main mar­kets like the US and Eu­rope may have to go through hoops to ac­cess their fa­vorite con­tent on­line. Cord cut­ters al­so miss out on break­ing TV news and the in­ter­ac­tion of some live events and re­al­i­ty shows.

Still, it's on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore on­line ser­vices match their ca­ble chan­nel coun­ter­parts in term of ease of ac­cess, li­cens­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty and im­me­di­a­cy of con­tent. Ca­ble com­pa­nies are al­ready ad­vances by mak­ing more shows avail­able in more ways to in­crease op­tions for sub­scribers.

Cut when ready

Ditch­ing ca­ble ser­vice is not for every­one. As tempt­ing as the ben­e­fits may be, cord cut­ting is not some­thing you want to rush in­to. A lit­tle re­search and prepa­ra­tion can go a long way to mak­ing the right choice at the right time. As with most things, there's a right way to go about cord-cut­ting, and then there's the way that sends you back to your ca­ble com­pa­ny beg­ging for re­con­nec­tion.

The op­tions for cord cut­ters are on­ly go­ing to get bet­ter with time. You'll have to do your home­work to fig­ure out when is the right time for you to join the fu­ture of tele­vi­sion.

Bevil Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fice at Con­gress WBN (C-WBN) an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor at Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, re­spon­si­ble for C-WBN's tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach ini­tia­tives. Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing