That was the year when Comcast finally had more Internet subscribers than TV ones. That was the year when streaming video became more than 2/3 of all Internet traffic. That was the year when big broadcasters and premium channels alike began to offer streaming-only, over the top video services subscription options. And it was even the year when Amazon took its first baby steps into being the “cable” company millions of us use today.
As we sat here ten years ago watching the clock turn over to start 2016, a few of the cable companies were starting to take their own first steps out of cable. Comcast had a little baby streaming service in tests, and a company called Time Warner Cable (then Charter, then purchased in 2021 by Anheuser-Busch InBev Miller Volkswagen Northrop Grumman) with 11 million subscribers was considering dumping the cable box and letting its service start being an app.
The stage was set. Although programming had been delivered in bundles of channels through terrestrial providers for thirty years, the age of the “cord-cutter” was ascendant. Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu had proven that you could not only deliver programming without being a linear (i.e. the opposite of on-demand) network, but succeed at it. Early shows like Transparent and Orange is the New Black paved the way for the online distributors to prove that they were just as much a prestige network as any HBO, and consumers bought it.
Source : Consumerist
