From the Norman TV View

If you read my last article here on the Norman TV View, you already know where this is headed. Cord-cutting, which started as a way to escape the rising costs of cable and satellite, has come full circle. Instead of liberation from the cord, we’ve simply rebooted it. The cord is still there — it’s just delivering our programming through the internet now instead of a coaxial cable in the wall. Same destination, different road.

So why did we cut the cord to begin with? That’s a great question, and honestly, one I’ve been asking myself more and more lately.

The original reason was simple: reduce the cost of watching our favorite programming. We bought antennas, streaming boxes, and plug-in devices to receive what we wanted without paying a cable or satellite bill. And there were some genuinely good things that came out of the transition to digital broadcasting. Picture quality improved significantly.

Reception got better over time as the old analog channels disappeared and people figured out the right antennas for their situations.

Speaking of antennas — allow me to get a little technical for just a moment. Feel free to skip the next paragraph if that’s not your thing.

Digital reception was a finicky beast after the transition, and here’s the simple reason why. With the old analog signals, you might remember something called “ghosting” — that double or blurry image on your screen caused by what engineers call multi-path interference. Annoying, but you could still watch. With digital signals, that same interference doesn’t give you a blurry picture — it kills the signal entirely. The digital data streams fall out of sync, and the processor simply can’t sort it out. That’s an oversimplification, but it matters if you use or plan to use an antenna. I covered this in my 2019 book, and after years of living with digital signals, I’ve learned even more. It’s a topic I’ll likely revisit here in a future article.

On the positive side, the number of digital channels available in my area has more than doubled in the last seven years, making antenna use more appealing than ever for cord-cutters. The catch is that antenna alone won’t get you everything you want to watch — and that’s exactly where the apps come in.

And that brings us to the heart of this article.

We are getting weary. As a whole, cord-cutters are exhausted by the maze of apps, subscriptions, and monthly fees required just to watch what we want, when we want to watch it. Streaming fatigue is real, and it’s settling in fast. The biggest driver, from where I sit, is cost. There are more apps than ever, most of them carrying a monthly or yearly fee, and the total keeps climbing. I mentioned in my last article that I’m personally paying about $20 more per month now than I did with cable — and getting less programming for it. I don’t think I’m alone in that.

With everything going on in the world today and prices rising across the board — gas, groceries, you name it — paying an ever-growing stack of app fees is getting harder to justify. People are starting to ask whether it’s worth it, and some are seriously considering going back to cable or satellite. Others are just cutting things off entirely.

In my opinion, the blame falls squarely on programming providers who needed to replace the income they lost when cord-cutting took off. Originally, they had a reliable revenue stream through cable and satellite re-providers. When people started leaving, that stream dried up. So they found another way to get it back — first by adding sports channels in separate tiers, then by launching their own apps, and, more recently, by pulling their original programming from other platforms to make their own apps more desirable. Every move is designed to bring the money back.

Now, I’ll soften that a little. “Force” is probably too strong a word for what they did. They simply gave viewers a choice: pay the fee and keep watching, or don’t. Reasonable enough on the surface. The problem is that those “minimal costs” have multiplied across so many providers that the total stopped being minimal a long time ago. The number of apps has at least doubled, and they’ve effectively become the new cable companies — just smaller, more numerous, and without the one-bill convenience.

Where does it go from here? In my opinion, cable and satellite providers aren’t going away — but they will continue adapting. DirecTV is already streaming its programming while still maintaining satellite service, and I believe their long-term plan is to phase satellite out entirely. Streaming will continue to grow in importance across the board. And costs will keep rising until providers either price themselves out of the market or viewers simply decide enough is enough and walk away.

That last scenario — what happens when viewers reach their breaking point — is worth its own conversation, and one I plan to have here soon.

But that’s just the Norman TV View. Time will tell if I’m right…

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 23, 2026 – all rights reserved

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

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