The Future of Television

    Recently, more and more TV shows have never even aired on television.  Shows are being made for the sole purpose of being put on Netflix along with other streaming websites.  As this continues it begs the question of at what point will people no longer feel the need to pay for cable when all of their favorite shows are available whenever they want, with no commercials, for a much lower price than what it costs for the endless number of channels on cable.  As someone who mostly watches TV in order to view sporting events and endless reruns of Seinfeld, this is something that I will probably never do with the current state of streaming services (the current state being that I use my roommates Netflix account).  However, Los Angeles Clippers owner and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who is one of the most technologically inclined owners in the league, proposed the idea of setting up a web streaming website in order to allow fans to watch Clippers games without needing cable.  This of course would be for a fee, fans would either be able to pay for the entire season or to pay per game.  The NBA currently has its own streaming service, like most professional sports leagues, which fans can pay for in order to watch any game live.  However, what the NBA does not tell you is that blackout restrictions apply.  For instance, if I was living in New Jersey and wanted to watch the New York Knicks on the NBA's service, I would be unable to, due to me being in the Knicks local area.  This also applies to nationally televised games on TNT and ESPN.  This actually happened to me my freshman year of college and I was able to get around it via some internet trickery.  This was extremely inconvenient and I plan on never using this service again, due to it being extremely slow and often crashing for no apparent reason.  What Mr. Ballmer is suggesting would be available for purchase to all fans regardless of location, it would also presumably run much more smoothly.  If every team had their own streaming service, I would be inclined to purchase a subscription to each of my favorite teams in each sport and cancel my cable contract.  With the multitude of ways to put internet services onto a television screen now, there would not even be the drawback of watching on a computer monitor.  If this were to happen, along with the progression of TV shows going straight to streaming services, the cable company may, over the next several decades, find itself completely unnecessary.