NFL Viewing is down 7.5%. Do you watch the Bengals as Much? Causes of this?

[Whatever]

(10-18-2017, 10:41 AM)Nately120 Wrote: Yep, the NFL is part of that pay-TV realm that has been losing traction for years.  When your options for watching football are either pay for an entire cable package or look it up on a pirated internet site...well, it's not a hard decision for many.  I'm 35 and a lot of people I know who all have real jobs and homes and lives don't have cable.  The concept of not having cable used to be insane...it was just for people who lived in the boonies and/or were dirt poor, but it's just not something people have for the sake of having anymore.

It's pretty similar to what happened to the music industry.  People didn't abandon music, but a loss of overall revenue for the common american and the availability of things for free via the internet (plus a mix of corporate greed and consumer greed) changed the entire music-making business model.  No longer do people have to wait in line and pay $18 for a new CD, so revenue streams needed to change in order to keep money flowing.

Honestly, the only reason I keep cable is in case of emergency broadcasts.  I still watch it, but not really enough to justify the cost.  Unfortunately, I have an older house that I can't get a digital antenna signal inside of.  

The music industry really changed because illegal downloading made it easier to steal music than buy it, and alot of people find it easier to rationalize illegal downloading/streaming vs pirating cable/shoplifting.  Fortunately, digital recording is dropping the cost of making an album, so artists don't have to go into as much debt, but it's still a big issue.  Pro wrestling still has massive issues with illegal streams, and WWE's ppv prices basically dropped from $60 to $10 with their streaming service.  A lot of people simply won't pay for something they can easily get for free, especially if there's pretty much no chance of repercussions.

Personally, I haven't watched as much because with the Bengals seemingly out of the playoff hunt, there's not much incentive for me to keep up on potential playoff competitors.  Several friends have cited protests, officiating and their teams sucking as reason for tuning out.