COMMENTARY

The New Water Cooler Conversation: Is It Time To Cut The Cord?

• by Steve McClellan , Staff Writer @mp_mcclellan, August 8, 2019

Media analyst firm MoffettNathanson has been keeping track of the amount of commercial time on TV and cable channels. It found that the second quarter contained another 1% increase, on top of steady gains throughout 2018.

So much for all those promises by media companies to reduce inventory.

Last week, the analyst firm also reported another big jump in cord-cutting. In the second quarter, AT&T, Comcast and Charter had a combined loss of more than 1.2 million traditional video subscribers.

Gee, do you think there is a connection? I don’t think there is any doubt.

There’s nothing worse than having to sit through a bunch of loud, lame and irrelevant TV ads when all you want to do is sit back and be entertained by compelling content. Talk about disruptive.

Advertisers are people too, and they’re not stupid. They have to wonder how many viewers actually pay attention to all those lame ads. Do you?

Intuitively, we all suspect the number is pretty low, although we won’t really know the answer until every TV set in America is eyeball-tracking enabled and someone keeps score.

By the time that happens, streaming will be the dominant video watching medium. With their built-in cameras, just about every computer has eye-ball tracking capability.

I can count on one hand the number of live commercial TV shows I’ve watched this year. Most of it is sports, as well as saying goodbye to the gang on "Big Bang Theory."

I watch my fair share of TV, mostly taped or streamed. And not a week goes by when I don’t have a conversation with a friend who’s either cut the cord or considering it. It’s the new water-cooler conversation: Is it time to cut the cord yet?

It’s really just a matter of time. Cord-cutting solves a lot of problems for viewers and lets them cherry-pick the channels and other content they actually want to experience, not the bloated, overpriced packages that TV providers want to cram down their throats.

Of course, the networks and distributors know this, too-- which is why most those who want to remain in business are also thinking about how to tap into the streaming world that viewers are increasingly opting into as they cut the cord.