Social Media Influencers will Kill Cable | Cable TV is Dying

In today’s video, we’re going to talk about why, despite streaming services being blamed for the downfall of cable, the real blame lies with the people we love and adore. Welcome…to why influencers will kill cable.Show more

Content On Demand :

Sure, watching content on-demand, without commercials, and wherever we want has its advantages. But unless you know exactly what you want to watch, the endless array of content these streaming services have can actually end up paralyzing you into watching nothing at all. Yet still, waste hours of your time trying to find something.

Cable, on the other hand, tells you what to watch (big bang theory/friends/Seinfeld), when to watch it, and where to watch it (in front of your TV). So you can’t really blame the streaming platforms for the death of cable. All Netflix did was buy the tombstone (tombstone with Netflix written on it). All Disney did was dig the hole. All Prime Video did was build the casket.

Influencers:

Influencers! Those people you obsessively follow on Instagram, TikTok, and to a lesser degree Snapchat, and Facebook. Those people whose videos you share, whose pictures you like, whose jokes you laugh at.
But more importantly, those people whose outfits you copy, whose products you buy, and whose advice you take.

Why, though? Why would the people you’ve come to know and love, be the reason that cable TV dies?

To understand that, first you have to understand how cable works. Giant cable providers like Comcast, that you pay an arm and a leg to, aren’t actually the ones who bring you your favorite tv shows. They provide the means for you to watch the shows. But they aren’t the ones who created them.

The ones who bring you those shows are actually the networks. The NBC’s, the ABC’s, the CBS’s, and every other large and small-scale network you surf through. These networks don’t actually bring you your favorite shows out of the goodness of their hearts.

The cable starts losing steam

Then Netflix came along, and on-demand TV became a thing. Your favorite cable networks suddenly started losing their loyal fan base, which meant advertisers weren’t getting enough eyeballs on their commercials anymore. Advertisers weren’t happy about that. And if advertisers weren’t happy, networks weren’t happy. But there wasn’t much that networks could do about it. They continued to lose eyeballs and weren’t able to find an alternative means to keep people glued to their TVs.

So businesses had to find another way to market their products.
Their biggest problem was that they couldn’t go where the eyeballs went. Giants like Netflix and Disney don’t allow commercials on their platforms.
So what could they do?

How would they reach their audience?

No one really thought much of it back then, but their salvation came from an unlikely source. Kim Kardashian. One of the world's first social media mega influencers. Kim Kardashian had millions of eyeballs on her at all times. All businesses had to do, was convince her to talk about their product.

More than TV Shows

Influencers aren’t just killing your favorite sitcoms and dramas, they’re also killing your favorite news channels. Over the last few years, there’s been a pretty big divide in the world.

From Trump to the Pandemic, TV news shows have been bickering back and forth about what’s “right” and what’s “wrong” with increasing intensity.
On the left you have CNN.

On the right, you have Fox News. But there is one influencer who views audience watch and trust more than both of them. He screams into the mic at the latest UFC Pay per view. He makes fun of your favorite celebrities on stage. He hosted Fear Factor.

In today's influencer age, a comedian and self-described “moron”, has become the go-to source to find out what’s going on in the world.
Networks fighting back. So what can the networks do to fight back?
They have to do something to get those eyes off their devices and back onto the TV screens.

Big cheques mean more profit. More profit means executives and shareholders should be happy. Like most things in Hollywood, nothing is guaranteed. Just because you throw big bucks at a show, doesn’t mean it's going to be a great show. A great show doesn’t mean great ratings. Great ratings, don’t mean advertisers will come back.

If you’re NBC, you really only have one clear cut solution. You start your own streaming service. You call it Peacock. You join in the ranks of Netflix, Disney, and the other streaming behemoths and pray that the nostalgia of hit shows like Friends, Seinfeld, Cheers, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, will be enough to convince customers to shell out another $10 a month on yet another streaming service.

And then you work nonstop on a new crop of tv shows to make sure they stick around.

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