There's a world outside the US. E.g. in most of Europe there are virtually no Netflix or Hulu-like services. Nearly everyone uses a Cable or DVB-T service.

A bit painful, considering that my ISP just announced to upgrade my connection from 120/10 MBit/s to 150/15. The bandwidth is there, but I guess it's hard to make licensing arrangements.

Even in the US, even in areas with good enough broadband to stream all your content, people still care about broadcast television because of sports. MS's focus here with ESPN and the NFL is bang-on.

"MS's focus here with ESPN and the NFL is bang-on."

I disagree. They managed to partner with the NFL but yet not show any games. Most of the games for my favorite team I still can't watch. Seems really lame to me.

Out of touch MBAs maybe.

This was good satire in 2000. 13 years later, not owning a t.v. is not the same as being unable to watch traditionally broadcasted shows.

The main point was more about how somebody who doesn't watch TV will always let you know that they don't. Not really the reasons why. I think in that case, the satire is still relevant. Plenty of people on reddit/HN/the Internet almost bragging about how they don't use a traditional TV setup.

Basically like the old joke "How can you tell if someone is an atheist? Don't worry, he'll tell you."

Maybe you hear that so often because it's a trend, so the idea of it being the focus of your media center box for the next decade might be a little antiquated.

Or it's a vocal minority of people who don't miss opportunities to talk about it. I don't care either way, especially since the article was posted as a little joke.