“I think linear TV is kinda toast,” actor Edward Norton told CNBC Tuesday. “I think even what we associate with live TV now — sports and events and news — will be made available through the streaming format[.]”
“If I was a cable company, I would get ready to be nothing but a broadband delivery company,” Norton accurately suggested.
“Linear TV” is broadcast, cable, and satellite TV, where you can only watch what is on at the time.
Norton explained that his children “cannot even conceive” of anything other than watching what they want when they want. The idea of waiting for something to come on TV, including sports, is a non-starter.
“My kids are eight and 11, right?” the Oscar nominee said. “They cannot even conceive of the idea that they would schedule their lives around a program for anything, not even for sports, and I think we’re going to see that television, even ad-supported television, is streaming television, and Netflix will be one of the biggest networks in history.”
Norton, who is no dilettante when it comes to business, investing, and tech, is absolutely right. I’ve been writing about and predicting this for more than a decade: cable/satellite TV is doomed. But the death of cable/satellite TV is the death of the entertainment business.
As I pointed out here, in 2023, Hollywood cannot survive on merit. The rigged affirmative action that is cable TV allowed Hollywood to survive for decades on the opposite of merit: a socialist system where 100 million households subscribed to 100 channels even though they watched fewer than ten. Everyone was subsidizing everyone else’s niche programming. You pay $150 a month for access to Fox News, TNT, and Turner Classic Movies, but a big part of your cable bill keeps basement-rated hate outlets like CNN, Comedy Central, MTV, the Disney Channel, and the rest going, even though no one watches them. Those outlets cannot survive on merit, which is attracting audience ratings high enough to earn the ad dollars needed to make a profit.
Streaming is merit-based. If we like your content, we pay for it. This is why every streamer not named Netflix is losing billions. Their content sucks ass. It’s all gay, woke, insulting, preachy, poorly written, and staffed with smug and unappealing actors who hate us.
On top of losing millions of customers every quarter, another factor that will hasten cable’s demise is streaming outlets moving to ads. There’s only so much ad revenue to go around, and it is a finite pie that also benefits free streaming outlets like Roku, Pluto, Tubi, and FreeVee, which offer a ton of great programming (movies, TV, classic TV, sports, reality, true crime, documentary, home improvement) at no cost, other than suffering through a few ads — which you do with your $150 a month cable package.
Question: Why is Netflix the only profitable streamer out there?
Easy answer…
Netflix has no choice but to be profitable. Netflix only has Netflix.
What I mean is this…
Disney+, Paramount Plus, Peacock, Max, and all these other failing streaming outlets are a small part of a massive multinational corporation. The streaming division can afford to lose money because the multinationals make it up elsewhere.
Netflix has only Netflix. If Netflix loses money, it cannot survive. Its only income is streaming. Therefore, Netflix actually has to please its customers.
The whole system is rigged, which is why I canceled all my streaming services and gay-married my Blu-ray collection.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover on Kindle and Audiobook.