Media Delivery Systems

Dorothy Snyder, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, has an interesting article entitled “Cutting the cable cord?” Internet broadband offerings, cell phones, Netflix, and other variables are upending the cable landscape.

One interesting thing I’ve noticed, not explored in the article, is how different my kids’ media consumption is than my own was at their age. The odd uptick in shows like Sponge Bob or Avatar notwithstanding, my kids tend not to be very interested in passively staring at a TV screen. Rather, they’re much more likely to play games on the computer. Cole, for example, likes to play around with a program called Game Maker to create (so far) small games – he’ll supplement this with trips to YouTube to look up tutorials on how to use the program. Or, he’ll play some kind of Mario game on the Wii, then get caught up in YouTube videos and music folks have posted with a Mario theme.

This does not bode well for the traditional cable television offerings. (I imagine that there are those among us who smirk a little at the notion of a “traditional” cable model since cable television penetration isn’t actually that old a phenomenon.) The article discusses a family who scaled back on their cable purchases when Comcast jacked the price up from $100 to $160/month. And, it mentions folks for whom cable bundling of telephone service isn’t a money-saving option because they already ditched their land-line.

All of these are familiar issues to me. We’ve gone back to the cable company more than once when their “promotional” pricing was expiring and requested (and received) additional “promotional” pricing as an alternative to us going elsewhere with our business. For me, I think the media pipe into our home is the main concern — I would be at a loss without Internet access generally — but, particular program offerings are no longer critical to me. “Must see” TV is a relic of the past.