The future of television

Americans are ditching cable in favor of Netflix and other streaming-video services. Is streaming the future of TV?

Netflix
(Image credit: (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images))

How many people are switching?

About 5 million people signed up for Netflix, Hulu, and other low-cost -streaming-video services in 2013, so they could watch shows and movies via the internet. Many of these people simultaneously "cut the cord" on their pay-TV subscriptions, resulting in a net decline of 250,000 cable subscribers that year — the first time that total has gone down. While cable companies still have 56 million subscribers among them, Netflix alone has rapidly amassed 36 million. That number is expected to keep rising, as people switch to the cheaper alternative of watching TV and movies on computers and TVs hooked up to the internet. Some networks already offer cable subscribers the option to stream their content, but next year both HBO and CBS will launch streaming services that don't require a cable subscription — the start, some say, of an "à la carte" subscription model. "The television industry is in transformation," says media analyst Jeffrey Kagan. "This entire space is going to be a completely different space in five years."

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