From the Norman TV View

A lot has changed in the seven years since I wrote my book, “So…You Just Want To Watch Television?” back in 2019. There’s a big difference between cord-cutting then and cord-cutting now — and if you’re like me, you may have noticed you’re not actually saving the money you thought you’d save.

I’m willing to bet many of you never actually cut the “cord” in the original sense. Instead, you changed how the cord serves up its offerings. Maybe you kept your cable or satellite service for a while as you explored antenna and internet-delivered options, and along the way discovered things you weren’t familiar with that captured your attention and stuck around alongside what you already had.

The original idea behind cord-cutting was simple: drop the “pay for” services, switch to off-air antenna reception, and use your existing internet service to pick up the rest — for free, or close to it. Some people did exactly that. Others never fully completed the switch.

That brings up something that aggravated me even back then, especially if you’re a sports fan. Sports is where I remember the changes starting. I’m not talking about ESPN and the other sports-only channels — I mean when the major networks started spinning off their own sports channels. FOX is the one everyone will remember, with Fox Sports 1 and later Fox Sports 2. Pay TV providers immediately put those in a separate, more expensive tier. Other networks followed suit, and that’s when people really started walking away from pay TV, putting up antennas, and paying only for what they actually wanted to watch.

That sports tiering turned out to be the opening move for what’s happened across all of programming since.

Here in 2026, nearly every programming provider has its own app — and nearly all of them charge you monthly or yearly to use it. Here’s my own experience: I’m not saving a dime anymore. I’m paying about $20 more per month than I did with cable, and getting less programming for it, spread across several different apps just to watch what I want to watch. If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

To be fair, the traditional pay TV providers probably still charge as much or more outright. And I’ve noticed ads on TV and radio for internet providers now copying the cheaper streaming pricing models to win customers back — bundling in their own programming packages along the way. Watch what you give up if you go back to one of those.

I wrote a whole chapter on this in my 2019 book, titled “Do You Understand What You Will Lose.” It pairs well with another chapter, “Don’t Be Fooled By The Advertising.” My opinion hasn’t changed: this is a vicious circle that always leads back to the same place. Programming has been split apart and reassembled into smaller, separately-priced pieces — not to give you more value, but to grow somebody else’s bottom line. Now, providers are pulling their original programming back from other platforms to make their own apps more desirable, which only feeds the cycle.

There’s no doubt streaming is the wave of the future and isn’t going away. The biggest problem down the road is likely going to be bandwidth. And with newer tech like ATSC 3.0 rolling out over the next months and years, the antenna landscape could change too. We just don’t know yet whether local broadcasters will eventually charge for what’s currently delivered free over antenna in some DMAs. Right now, they say they won’t — but then again, streaming was supposed to be less costly too.

That cycle — too many services, rising costs — is exactly what I’ll dig into next, in an article titled “Streaming Fatigue: Too Many Services, Rising Costs,” coming soon to the Norman TV View.

Hey, this is Russ, and that’s the Norman TV View… See ya next time…

All views expressed are strictly the opinion of the writer

© June 17, 2026 – all rights reserved

Rusty Norman, Norman-TV.com, the Norman TV View

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