The Quiet Extinction of Cable Television

by Madison Soffian and Julia Capozzoli

Will your childhood be erased? That’s the question on everyone’s mind!

High school students, alike, reminisce on the “simple” days— the mornings filled with Disney Channel Jr. marathons or the afternoons scheduled around the 4 PM Nickelodeon Halloween Special. The excitement of watching a live new episode and the disappointment of aimlessly “channel searching” equate to an ancient artifact: cable TV. Notably, in the recent era, streaming services are taking over.

Unlike cable TV, streaming services eliminate the fear of having nothing to watch, while providing hundreds of categorized shows and movies at the tap of a finger.

Still, cable TV remains somewhat alive. Sports networks and news channels are cable TV’s lifeboats in an ocean booming with Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and more.

Perhaps, the slow death of cable TV can be credited to social media. Media platforms heavily influence all individuals— whether we like to admit it or not. Social media users express opinions about shows and movies, impacting the cinema’s popularity. More often than not, the social media-boosted shows are only available on Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, and more.

With cable TV, many people in our young generation do not pay attention to what time the specific program is going live and don’t stop what they are doing to watch it at that precise time. Thus, scheduled programming is no longer ideal. Live television prevents the ability to fast-forward, presenting yet another inconvenience to viewers.

Interestingly, older generations remain hopeful for the rebirth of cable TV. However, all desires are shot down by price inflations of core live networks. Due to essential cable programs raising the price of subscription, the amount of individuals purchasing cable TV has steadily diminished; researchers predict this trend will only decline in years to come...

On average, cable TV costs $79 per month. This price seems ungodly when compared to Netflix’s starting rate of $6.99 per month. Though the individual difference is substantial, the cost of streaming services is additive, making the overall price rather fair.

Cable TV will likely experience a slow and painful death. But for now, we can thank those who religiously watch the morning news or indulge in nightly soap operas for keeping cable TV (and our childhoods) alive!

by Laura Silenzio

Over the last few decades, teenagers have been increasingly relying on social media for their everyday news. This fact comes with a vast list of pros and cons. While social media offers speed and accessibility for consumers, anyone can post anything for the public to consume without any verified facts, leading to a glorified game of telephone, or worse: “fake news.”

There are several reasons why teens consume their news via social media. For one, there has been an increasing reliance on visual forms of media, especially in the Digital Age. Almost everything we’re fed on our social media is some form of shortened content meant to grab our attention; without a hook, many will just keep scrolling. Content creators and brands are aware of this tactic and use it to their advantage, especially when it comes to sensationalized headlines or embellishing facts to draw more attention to their cause.

However, a big misconception from this data is that teens just listen to whatever their phones tell them. In reality, a large portion of the people consuming this content don’t actually believe that all the information they’re receiving is accurate. To articulate this trend, I conducted a sample survey for Eastern students. When asked if social media is a credible source for news, one teen explains, “I don’t usually believe [social media] is accurate. If I see something on social media, I usually research it to see the credibility of it. Social media is almost never completely accurate because people easily change information to fit their opinion.”

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford provided quantitative evidence on the growth of social media as a news source for those aged 18-24. The research found that the amount of individuals using Tik Tok as a news source increased 400% between 2020 and 2022

To increase views, clicks, and advertising revenues, content creators and brands show stories that viewers want to see, slanting viewpoints further. The result? Increasingly polarizing views. People are exposed to a less diverse palette of actual current affairs due to their tailored “For You Pages” which hand-pick content based on a computerized algorithm. Expanding on this point, an Eastern student explains, “Not one person’s newsfeed is the same. They are driven by powerful algorithms that have dramatically influenced the way we receive news. There should be a concern throughout society about the credibility of all the news we consume.”

Because of this feature, though, news organizations have an opportunity to increase their efforts to engage younger audiences, especially on interactive platforms like Snapchat and Instagram. Evidentally, building loyalty with the use of credible news now is likely to have a positive impact in the future with overall engagement and trust. Now is the time to invest in journalism that pushes growth rather than division.

Still, the main problem that arises is that a lot of the news digested by these consumers originate on such platform instead of a credible source. There have been several times a content creator or even average citizen has posted about something they experienced and it reaches millions of people before news sites even get the chance to pick up the story. Just a year ago, the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard case was live streamed on YouTube, allowing consumers to watch the action in real time rather than waiting for news sources to release their stories.

Politically, teens are more likely to be moderate but are still open to ideas from sources whose opinions differ from their own. In fact, this is what many news-consuming teens appreciate most about these platforms; they offer a range of opinions on any topical story— a range many local and national news organizations struggle to obtain, especially within the current political sphere. As our generation becomes increasingly involved in national and international issues, a lot of us value a platform that offers the freedom to express those opinions. Therefore, we turn to social media— a place where some adults may consider our speech a little “too free.”