TV is not dying
I work in this industry, and let me assure you: TV is most definitely dying. Or rather, the traditional business model where you subscribe to a huge bundle for pay TV is dying. That&#x27;s a good thing.<p>The thing is, it&#x27;s dying in a long-form death: people don&#x27;t just change media consumption habits overnight; it&#x27;s more of a generational shift that happens pretty much like the author of this article describes. I don&#x27;t anticipate TV as we know it today to disappear for another 10-15 years. I mean, we still have land lines a good 2 decades after cell phones made them obsolete...<p>The author&#x27;s numbers are garbage (no offense intended to op; good numbers on media consumption are considered confidential and proprietary for most companies so it almost requires working for a large media company with a large customer base). Nielsen in particular is known within the industry for basically only being meaningful in the context of a specific month (i.e. it&#x27;s a good way to know if show A outdrew show B, but the overall numbers they give you around viewership are wrong). Basically everyone knows Nielsen is wrong, but there aren&#x27;t any better options because nobody is willing to trust anyone in media measurement.<p>But however you slice it, medium-form TV content (&gt;15 mins, &lt;60 mins) is not going anywhere. Viewers like this format and I expect it to stay. But look where all the highest quality content is aggregating: for-pay, ad-free services like Netflix , Amazon and Hulu (not <i>entirely</i> ad-free, but close).<p>Video advertising, however, is about to see an apocalyptic drop in ad rates. There&#x27;s a 20-30% disparity in CPMs between TV and online, and once advertisers catch on that most of those TVs are probably playing in the background with nobody watching, ad rates will come down. And that will <i>really</i> kill the traditional TV market.