Cable is DEAD....again.

The cry of cable is dead is ringing out across the internet this week with the twin announcements that HBO and CBS are opening up OTT streaming shops.  Before we all get out our black mourning coats for cable there are 2 things to keep in mind.  First off, in every article I read, Time Warner, owner of HBO, is working with MPVD providers (cable companies) in rolling out their services.  HBO is not going to endanger their core business to scrape up a few million ‘Game of Thrones’ pirates.  In fact, all you bit torrent users may want to beware, I feel a substantial change coming over HBO about the pirating of their service to view GoT.  They had viewed it as a badge of honor in past, but I believe they are over that and want the money.  So in the end, I think there will be some folks to leave cable to get only HBO, but far more of their potential viewers get no cable now, so there won’t be a huge change.

Now, about CBS.  They are hoping you will pay $6 per month to view past episodes of current shows, and past seasons of their programming.  So the boys of the Ponderosa will ride again and Captain Kirk will be zooming around the galaxy with Spock, et al.  Here’s the problem, cable subscribers can already access this seasons’ programming with the On Demand function of their cable boxes.  Most if not all of the older shows are available on Hulu, Netflix and other OTT services.  So why would someone want to pay $6 to get it all in one place?  Because Sumner Redstone believes that the Tiffany Network still carries the kind of cache that makes people think that 6 bucks is worth it to get all that content in one place.    It’s a branding effort.  I remember watching a roundtable and the FX network president complained to Reed Hastings of Netflix that he was irritated that there was no branding of FX when people go to Netflix and watch past episodes of Sons of Anarchy.  Same thing with CBS, they hope that the stored goodwill of the past will reflect on the current crop of shows.  Whether or not Redstone is right remains to be seen, but I’m betting not.