Cliffhangers

Now that May has arrived, here in 2023, I acknowledge this is the month the broadcast networks complete their regular-season schedule of a given series having either a season or a series finale. (They usually get their last episode in by the Wednesday of the week just prior to Memorial Day. Here in 2023, this would be Wednesday, May 24, 2023.)

The cliffhanger, recognized for decades, is of a series leaving you hanging. Then all you have to do is come back with the first episode of the next season, typically scheduled in late-September.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. It was the latter of the two decades which delighted in the prime-time soaps—ABC’s Dynasty and CBS’s Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing—following this formula.

The cliffhangers I am interested in, nowadays, are having to do with parts of the industry experiencing some changes.

Among them:

• What will become of PAC–12?  When the PAC–12 Conference hired Larry Scott, years ago, they clearly did not know what they were doing. He failed to get the schools of the PAC–12 money and profit; to get them a television partner with whom they could be successful and build on that success; and the conference kept renewing Scott’s contract. Their inability to get a contract for their PAC–12 Network (which has seven screens) for carriage on DirecTV—during the first half of the 2010s (before DirecTV agreed to be acquired in 2014 by AT&T)—showed the PAC–12 was limiting itself and the presence of their schools in college sports. At the time, DirecTV had more television subscribers than any other U.S. cable or satellite company. Now, the PAC–12 Conference faces realignment—two California teams have bailed; others want to follow (so this is pending)—and any of the recent efforts by PAC–12 to get a television partner, for linear carriage, are resulting in lowball offers.

• What will become of the Regional Sports Networks (RSNs)? Bally Sports—which acquired in 2020 numerous markets (including mine, Detroit, Michigan) from Fox Sports—has declared bankruptcy. It cannot make payments to some teams. AT&T SportsNet, also with numerous markets, wants out. Since these RSNs show so many of the games of the pro-sports leagues—minus National Football League—this is a problem for the teams. And with the increasing trend of cable-television subscriptions cancellations, and that people want to not pay a provider somewhere between $10 to $15 for an RSN, this is a business model which is either going through a transitional period or is dying out.

• “Comcast & Spectrum Lost Over 2.6 Million TV Customers in 2022 & Its Speeding Up In 2023” (Link) was reported Sunday, April 30, 2023 on the website of Cord Cutter News. (Last week, I updated the sidebar Recommendations to include in “Videos” Cord Cutter News.) According to that blog’s report, “If these numbers continue, these two companies alone could easily lose 3 million TV customers. That would work out to over 8,000 people canceling Comcast and Spectrum every single day in 2023.” 

Yes, this is all intriguing. Especially worth noting—for the cable-television subscriptions—is why people cancel. What is often passed along to this explain this phenomenon has to do with people feeling that the On Demand-type streamers—Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, et al.—provide more in the overall content that people want to watch. That is not saying enough. Why cord-cutting is continuing to trend is not just about content. What doesn’t get addressed often enough has to do with people’s incomes. That is a personal matter. But it is also a national issue. In relation to the costs to daily living, and given alarming inflation, people’s incomes are not in line with being able to splurge and go for all the bells and whistles that a cable or satellite company offers. Between Internet and cable television, more people have Internet. When it comes to television, and their costs (and this includes the above RSN), they end up making a decision. Their decision, while perhaps seeking an alternative, is to say good-bye. Good-bye to the traditional model. Good-bye to the local stations and RSN fees. Good-bye to the miscellaneous costs, connected with a cable-television subscription, which include equipment charge. Good-bye.