News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:I don't miss cable tv by mahmud on Thursday November 04, 2010 @10:42AM (#1869044)
Benevolent message, but .. far more people than you can imagine have "quit TV". In fact, my entire twitter graph, people on IRC, social networks, even the local pubs I frequent, and everyone who responded in this thread have all quit TV. Stories of triumph over the tube are abundant, and the reasons nearly identical. People have been unanimous on two things: 1) their disdain for TV, American or otherwise and 2) their love for puppies.

Just from 4 days ago, front-page:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1850998

Re:I don't miss cable tv by mikeryan on Thursday November 04, 2010 @12:19PM (#1869521)
So quitting TV and quitting cable are two very different things. Even the article you link to is about cord cutting - not TV cutting.

The current industry trends are not actually people leaving cable all together (though that did happen last quarter but in relatively minor amounts). The scariest thing for the cable operators is people backing off of their premium offerings. People aren't going to pay $10 an month extra for Showtime if they can just buy a season Dexter on Amazon for ~$25.

People love their TV (average 2.5 hours per day watched in the US) they're just finding new ways to get it.

Re:I don't miss cable tv by ugh on Thursday November 04, 2010 @11:14AM (#1869214)
Massive shifts in TV usage haven’t happened yet. It is increasing or stagnant, even among young people. While some countries show very coy declines in TV usage among young people (on the order of one or two percent) you have to consider that TV usage only ten years ago was way down compared to today.

Multitasking seems to become the predominant usage model. Americans use media on average for twelve hours per day, that wouldn’t be possible if they weren’t using some things at the same time.

Re:I don't miss cable tv by TheSOB88 on Thursday November 04, 2010 @11:10AM (#1869195)
I think it's worth talking about. For half a century, nearly the whole country has been glued to the TV and told (sometimes more subtly than others) what to think. That we are breaking free of that is newsworthy.