Cable/satellite service will have to come down in price to keep a large audience for ads. It will probably be too late. With less revenue, it will be harder to produce top shows and compete with the high quality content that is being produced at a fraction of the cost. I think it's going to continue to grow to be one or two services and a few direct a la carte channel subscriptions for consumers.
Sports is a big driver for many services (ex: NFL for DirecTV) but you can now subscribe to Sunday Ticket if you can't get DirecTV where you're at. Big Ten Network can be streamed without a tv service too. You can just add a cheap HD OTA antenna to get network channels. Once most the sports outlets go direct, there'll be a huge exodus.
Or the same content outlets will have to deliver content through streaming, either subscription or ad supported, while the same service providers will just make money selling internet service rather than cable/satellite TV service.
Right now - internet is more valuable to most people but much less expensive per month than tv in a package. TV is just not reasonably priced, especially when you still have ads on every channel.
If anything, TV should be free with the networks selling advertising and paying the tv provider for their infrastructure and audience. Basically like magazines. Give it away. Get an audience. Sell ads. Don't squeeze us from both ends and charge us for content AND monthly for each piece of shitty equipment.
Or sell channels a la carte at a fair price and make it easy. These packages are ridiculous. You have a ton of stuff you don't want. Then they reconcile viewership on the backend to figure out what members of that package should get what portion of each subscription. It's old-school. It inflates the TV price because you often have to purchase a larger package than you need to get the variety of channels you want.
Consumers are simply tired of paying for content AND getting ads.
Roku is amazing and they could enable the a la carte direct subscription model with the content providers. But for most channels right now, when you add one, you have to login with your TV provider and validate.
At best, people would capture streams with something like a DVR, then FF through the ads. Besides, with advertising comes advertisers, and their predictable responses to pressure groups compromising the actual product. Good luck making 'Game of Thrones' with ad money!
