Time has become a tougher concept to grasp since COVID-19 changed our world, but estimates suggest that we’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the pandemic.

To reflect on the past year, FierceVideo asked executives across streaming video, broadband, pay TV, advertising, video technology and infrastructure to share their insights on trends that have emerged or accelerated during the pandemic.

We asked everyone the same question: “What has changed the most since the pandemic began, and what have you learned?” Here are their answers.

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John Bickham, president and chief operating officer, Charter Communications

When the pandemic started the circumstances were changing almost weekly, and we needed to adapt quickly. We have direct contact with our customers, and we needed to keep our employees and our customers healthy. To do this we needed to reduce in-home visits and modify our business, while maintaining our commitment connecting our customers to their broadband services so they could work and study from home, access health care and watch their favorite shows.

One of the many changes we made was to accelerate our self-installation program, which we already were moving toward. We began shipping customers their equipment and having our field technicians focus on working outside of customer homes. Our self-installation program expanded dramatically from about 50% of sales prior to the pandemic to a new steady state of over 80% of sales during the fourth quarter of 2020. We also saw a significant increase in the use of our online and digital sales and self-service platforms, all of which improves customer satisfaction.

Tony Werner, president of technology, product and Xperience, Comcast Cable

We’ve learned a lot over the past year, but what will stick with me most is how well our people, our networks and our industry respond to adversity. In the midst of managing an historic traffic event, while transitioning the vast majority of our team to working from home, our people and technology rose to the occasion and helped provide a light in the darkness to millions. The pandemic also confirmed for us that our commitment to strategic investment, software innovation and building a world-class team was the right approach to be ready for the unexpected.

Peter Katsingris, senior vice president of Audience Insights, Nielsen

Even pre-COVID, media use was changing. The media options provided to the consumer have been increasing over the years. They have more options than ever of content to watch via free or subscription video-on-demand services, not to mention how that content gets into their home. Devices to access this content are more widely available through the home to either watch on the big screen in the home or on their portable digital screens.

During this pandemic, some of these changes were accelerated as more people were spending time at home. At first, strict quarantine measures to stem the spread of the virus boosted overall television usage but has since continued pre-COVID levels as the nation continues its reopening. However, one of the biggest behavioral shifts that has remained is the increased amount of streaming to the television set, which has grown from being a younger behavior to people of all ages engaging with content that way. I believe that some of these temporary behaviors we adopted will become, if not already, more permanent as we move forward.

Jeff Shultz, chief strategy officer and chief business development officer for Streaming, ViacomCBS

Meeting my partners and colleagues in person is important to me, and I typically travel very frequently. Zero travel and constant Zoom during the pandem...