So I understand that business-wise it works and there is money to be made by charging people to watch TV, but I’m wondering what dish/direcTV/etc actually do in terms of innovating and getting entertainment on the air? My understanding is that the money from commercials goes straight to the networks, what incentive is there for the networks to not just allow free streaming on their websites so that more people see the show and the commercials in it?
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Cable companies provide a service to their customers – providing lots of content on one cable. Without that cable, you would need to have multiple Ota antennas on your roof and try to find other content with additional antennas-probably large satellite dishes in your back yard. In a similar way that a municipal water utility provides clean drinking water to their customers eliminating the need for each house to drill a well in their backyard and filter, test and clean the water of contaminants.
That wire underground or up on poles requires maintenance, the tuner box requires a subscription to decode the encrypted channels, and more importantly, the providers (HBO, BBC, showtime, etc) charge the cable co to carry their content. Because they gotta pay to license the shows as well.
You don’t have to have cable, but if you want 100 channels of nothing to watch, you need to subscribe.
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