Risk of Cable Monopoly

As the year closes, we can bid a not-fond farewell to the venerable, archaic institution of cable television (CATV), a mediocre industry enabled and doomed by regulations that prohibited consumer choice in selecting television providers (for reference: The Subjugation of Competition and Consumer Choice By Exclusive Municipal Cable Franchises.

Dear cable company: It's over. I don't need you. I watch Warriors basketball games from any device via NBATV. A $7/month Netflix account gives me access to movies and programs I care about, no commercials. I stream new movies from Amazon Prime, or go to a movie theater. If I want accurate news, I go to trusted Internet outlets. If I want cable and broadcast news info-tainment delivered by ridiculous talking heads, I'll watch from the airport terminal.

Goodbye abysmal customer service, pricey a la carte offerings. Farewell archaic scrolling channel list, sadistic television remote. The fading CATV business model may mutate and linger, but it shall not rule again

(Business Insider graphic, below: number of cable subscribers dips below 40M.)

What killed cable? What didn't kill cable? Broadband Internet content (YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, the list goes on). Price hikes by cable providers in response to broadband Internet. Improved video encoding technologies (NetFlix). HBO, CBS, Showtime, ESPN going to standalone mode. DVI-to-HDMI cables linking computers to TV screens. Wireless connections from computer to TV (Chromecast). Video game consoles doubling as content providers (XBOX, PS4). A shrinking CATV customer base (largely retired, dying off). Cord-cutters like me. Cord-nevers in the form of college-age men and women who view cable as a curious artifact of days past.

Only in retrospect do we believe that an occupation, a company, or a monopoly can become irrelevant. Just two examples: Some of us may emember the quaint necessity of a travel agent, that slightly glamorous sales position ... that went the way of the phone book. More recently, in 2000, Sun Microsystems servers and workstations were hailed as the underpinnings of the boom-proof dot.com economy. A mere ten years later, those machines were scrap, and Sun's shrunken work force (along with it's proprietary technology) was inhaled by Oracle.

Yes I'm still watching cable TV -- clumsy proprietary hardware, cabling clutter, ten times more channels that necessary -- going through its death throes.

Soon people will ask, incredulously, "Dude, you still pay for cable -- why?"