Like many, I am a cord cutter. Chiming along with the “everything-is-online” choir, I opted to rely on broadband and a data plan to serve my content needs. Originally, it just made sense to do away with a medium that seemed redundant and expensive. Some studies estimate that cord cutting has reached 5.7% in Canada1.
However, perhaps because I’m not a digital native, my content experience, post-TV, has felt unsatisfying and… incomplete.
While I do love the Web as it is, I also feel over-indulged by it. Take just a few of the giants: Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, the almighty genie-in-the-lamp Google, all work at crawling, anticipating, granting every search wish, and suggesting content that they and we know we like.
But as helpful as that might sound, as in any consuming situation, we users have our blind spots. In addition to the stuff we want, there’s the stuff we don’t want, and the stuff we didn’t know existed… Like music outside our usual range, that we mean to discover but need a little push to get to. And that won’t happen if we are to curate content for ourselves and be “serviced” by the Web this eagerly.
Thus, is my qualm with my current media mix, comprised of some social media, Netflix, iTunes, Google everything, patched together to create a somewhat comprehensive content experience. My Facebook feed and the few TV channels I still get have provided some much-needed push content but have not sufficed to cover that blind spot. So much so, that I’m thinking about re-wiring…
Come to think of it, re-wiring may not be such a backward move, as television seems to have retained its relevance, with Old and New Media serving separate, complementary needs. While pulled content from New Media provides us with an interactive experience, completely under our control, television directs us towards content chosen for us, giving us users a break from our search rut habits.
What do you think? Are you a cord-cutter? What do you think is the place of TV in daily life?
1http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cord-cutting-continues-as-canadians-ditch-tv-landlines-1.2601373