The economics of over-the-air TV are crumbling, more likely.
Local stations have been dying for two decades, and without local affiliates... what are you even offering to most people that's valuable?
We joke about how few people actually have cable and how its pointless that FOX News is the most watched cable network because all the people who watch it are octogenarians who will surely die soon and take their subscriptions with them... Yet we don't seem to realize even fewer people care to fuck with an antennae, or if they have cable, are even bothering to watch NBC, CBS, or ABC.
Traditional TV is dying and has been for two solid decades. Ever since Anne Sweeney, President of Disney-ABC Television told her daughter that “You’re going to have a television if I have to nail it to your wall ... You have to have one." in 2009. She said this at a Reuters event, promoting this as though she was tough and knew how to fight the upcoming streaming behemoth. The people running this dead fucking industry have been completely out to lunch for two decades as the internet has been eating their lunch.
Web-TV Divide Is Back in Focus With NBC Sale NYT, Dec 3, 2009
“Mom, you don’t understand. I don’t need it,” her 19-year-old responded, saying she could watch whatever she wanted on her computer, at no charge.
That flustered Ms. Sweeney, who happens to be the president of the Disney-ABC Television Group.
“You’re going to have a television if I have to nail it to your wall,” she told her daughter, according to comments she made at a Reuters event this week. “You have to have one.”