By CONOR SHEA
Executive Editor
In just under a month, a new batch of 20-somethings will be thrown from the womb that is college life into the real world. While many take this time to debate the unemployment of these soon-to-be grads, the more interesting discussion is how they will be influencing the marketplace. Their struggle to find gainful employment, and subsequent need for tight budgeting, will drive these former students to drop the cable bill, or in many cases, never pick it up in the first place.
Since the advent of high-quality video streaming, and the adoption of platform-generated content, consumers have been moving to “cut the cord” of cable. Once consumers experience the convenience of on-demand viewing, it becomes the new norm and can be hard to move away from.
We are reaching the tipping point of influence for the move away from cable, and the millennials are the driving that force. We want our content when it’s convenient for us, and the ability to DVR it for later isn’t enough. Millennials have grown up believing in the three pillars of the internet: instantaneous, personalized, and ubiquitous. We want our content immediately, we want it to be ours, and we want it anywhere and everywhere we are.
The fallacy of the millennial generation is that they are perceived as impatient in all cases. While they may be in many instances, when it comes to saving a buck, they don’t mind waiting.
Part of this comes from the cost of tuition and student loans. The other part comes from the practical education in budgeting learned from their baby boomer parents. It would make sense if millennials had difficulty waiting for cable TV content to be put up online the next day. And yet, more and more of them aren’t springing for even the most basic cable packages after graduation. If the option is paying $70 a month or $8 a month and waiting a day until it’s online, milennials will choose the latter, nine times out of ten.
The Netflix business model has further ruined it for a lot of competitors entering the marketplace. You pay a fee with Netflix, and this guarantees you unlimited access to content, no commercials, no waiting. Hulu, which is owned by cable companies, charges you per month, and they make you sit through commercials. Millenials have a hard time following that logic- why would you pay for something then not have access to it immediately, and indefinitely?
HBO recently also tried to emulate this business model, or so it seemed at first. In addition to their streaming service, HBO Go, they unveiled the brand-new HBO Now. “Go” is the digital platform for those who pay for HBO as part of their cable bill. It allows for them to watch their content on a digital platform when not near a TV.
HBO Now is a separate service that lets people pay into the online and streaming portion of HBO without having to have cable first. In theory it sounds appealing, but the content is still distributed at the same rate. So while on Netflix you can binge-watch two whole seasons of “Breaking Bad,” with HBO Now, you still need to wait for each episode to be aired on TV before access is granted.
It’s a valiant effort by the cable TV giant, but it clearly misses the core values of streamed content. Netflix-produced shows like “House of Cards,” “Orange is the New Black,” and “Daredevil” are released all at once, allowing for true binge watching. Once the streaming marketplace catches up to Netflix, keep an eye on those cable giants’ stocks- then watch as the millenials show their true influence.
