How Cable TV Shaped Our Viewing Habits, Industries – and Identities

More and more TV households are cutting the cord and moving to streaming. In 2023 alone, pay-TV providers lost more than 5 million subscribers. But now that streaming companies have a robust subscriber base, rates are rising and commercials are making their way back into programming. Historian Kathryn Cramer Brownell says that when cable companies tried similar tactics in the 1980s, the government stepped in to protect consumers. So why hasn’t that happened with streaming? We’ll take a look at the history of cable with Brownell to understand how the cable TV model set the foundation for our current media landscape and what consumers can do about it.