Never Mind The Analysts, Cord-Cutting’s Still Not A Thing

There’s a lot of noise online today about yet-another-analyst-report that predicts a massive increase in cord-cutting over the next few years.

Only it doesn’t.

Because it all depends on how you define “cord cutting.”

What these reports are suggesting is that millions of people may abandon set-top-box based TV service for internet-based TV service.

What they forgot to add however, is that internet-based TV service is largely coming from the exact same players who currently supply us with set-top-box based TV service.

That’s right: AT&T/Direct TV, Dish, Verizon, Comcast, Charter and CenturyLink all either currently provide or have announced their intentions to provide virtual pay-TV services, e.g., “cable TV” designed to be delivered via the broadband connections they also supply.

So how exactly is that “cutting the cord?”

Where I’m standing, paying a large cable company for access to pay-TV and broadband is paying a large cable company for access to pay-TV and broadband, regardless of how it is actually delivered.

At the end of the day, if Discovery or NBC or HBO is showing up on my TV set, it’s all the same to me. And if I’m Comcast, and I’m still getting paid for that TV service, I’m probably not all that concerned about how it’s getting there either. (Actually, Comcast is likely happier to provide broadband TV service because it means the user will need faster internet speeds and they make more money off of broadband than they do off of pay TV.)

Is there any real downside to this shift?

Possibly.

Smaller TV channels may get left out of many of the new digital bundles, which generally have smaller and more streamlined channel offerings. Some of them might wind up being On Demand only, some might go off the air for good. Or the new new “skinny” bundles might also wind up having a “fat” offering, with hundreds of channels on offer. It really depends on what the market is looking for, on trial and error to see what’s the best fit.

But rest assured, TV is far from dead or dying. It’s changing rapidly for sure: people are watching more time-shifted television, they are binge viewing entire seven season series, and they’re watching TV on smartphones and on tablets.

But one thing they’re not doing is giving up on television.

At least not yet.

“If you know anything about television, you probably know Alan Wolk.” That’s how Adweek describes the best-selling author of Over The Top. How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk currently serves as Lead Analyst for TV[R]EV.