MW The era of zombie television: Why is there never anything to watch on cable?

By Lukas I. Alpert

More than 60 million U.S. homes still have cable, but they largely get reality shows, old movies and 21-hour-long blocs of 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'

The long-running lament among TV viewers is that you get 500 channels but there is never anything to watch. But what was once a bit of hyperbole is now mostly true - there is almost nothing new to watch on TV.

A search of TV schedules for basic cable paints a bleak picture: Over the course of a recent week, there was not one listing for a newly created episode of scripted television on over 100 channels reviewed by MarketWatch.

These days, almost all newly created programs are made for streaming, with little of that programming ever appearing on basic cable - a service that more than 60 million homes in the U.S. still receive and often pay over $100 a month for. Among the streaming services, only Netflix Inc. $(NFLX)$ has more U.S. customers.

A decade ago, basic-cable channels produced a record-high 186 scripted original series, with hit shows like "The Walking Dead" and "The Americans" leading the way, according to a report analyzing programming put out annually by FX Networks. That was right as the streaming boom was beginning to accelerate, triggering a rapid shift in where programming would be available.

Now the number of new scripted series made for cable audiences is nearly zero, with customers left with little more than a zombie landscape of reality-show reruns, old movies and hours-long blocks of "Law & Order," "NCIS" and "Friends."

A big part of the reason is cost - producing scripted dramas is expensive. But a highly produced hit can bring prestige and buzz, which is exactly what TV companies have been looking for to help with their growing streaming businesses.

"Over the past decade, basic cable has hemorrhaged viewers and ad dollars, just as these companies were trying to attract subscribers to streaming," said Brad Adgate, a longtime media analyst and consultant. "But they had to provide these new customers with something to watch, so they decided to prioritize streaming over cable."

This shift in priorities has led executives at many major media companies to seriously consider the future for their cable channels. Late last year, Comcast Corp. $(CMCSA)$ announced it would spin off many of the cable channels owned by its NBCUniversal division, including longtime basic-cable stalwarts like USA Network, Syfy and E!, as well as news channels MSNBC and CNBC.

Comcast, however, opted to keep the basic-cable channel Bravo within NBCUniversal because it produces the highly successful "Real Housewives" franchise, which performs well on its Peacock streaming service.

This steady movement of audience raises questions about the future of cable. So far, cable providers have managed to retain a big enough audience maintaining a strong grip on live events, particularly sports broadcasts. But that grip has been slowly eroding.

Older audiences have also remained with cable, perhaps out of habit, with younger viewers having cut the cord or never having had cable in the first place. Cable providers have also offered smaller packages called "skinny bundles" at lower costs in an effort to keep subscriber numbers up.

Peak streaming overtakes must-see TV

While cable TV is still widely available, it has been in serious decline over the past decade as cord cutting has accelerated. In 2015, cable was available in almost 100 million homes; now it's down to around 60 million. Equity-research firm MoffettNathanson estimates that number to be closer to 50 million by 2028.

At the same time, the number of streaming subscribers had risen to 124 million in 2024, across a plethora of services.

This period of transition has led to ever more programming being made. Aside from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood writers strike, the number of new scripted programs being produced has increased every year for over a decade, hitting a record of 600 in 2022.

But the shift also saw most scripted programming moving to streaming, while live broadcasts like sports and news have so far mostly remained on linear TV. Whatever new programming that is being made for cable is mostly reality shows and true-crime documentaries. The rest of the schedule is largely filled with reruns and old movies, mostly coming from the catalogs of a channel's parent company.

The shift to streaming has led to some confusing programming choices and often has presented challenges to viewers about where to find a buzzworthy show. Take, for example, the hit western soap opera "Yellowstone," starring Kevin Costner.

The show first aired in 2018 on the Paramount Network, a then-newly launched channel owned by Viacom at the time. As the show took off, the exclusive streaming rights were licensed to NBCUniversal's Peacock in 2019. That same year, Viacom merged with CBS to become Paramount Global (PARA), which would later launch its own streaming service, Paramount+ - but streamed episodes of "Yellowstone" would remain on Peacock. Reruns later were made available on CBS.

Based on the success of the show, Paramount signed a long-term deal with creator Taylor Sheridan, who has since produced the "Yellowstone" spinoffs"1883" and "1923" and other series like "Tulsa King," starring Sylvester Stallone, and "The Mayor of Kingstown," starring Jeremy Renner. But those shows have largely been aired on Paramount+, and not on Paramount's cable channels or CBS.

Paramount's former chief executive, Bob Bakish, would eventually come to consider the Peacock deal "unfortunate." The company now says it understands that the setup could be confusing for viewers, but that it was all part of a bigger strategy.

"Our strategy has been centered around the principle that it's not about either/or, it's about more across linear and streaming," a Paramount spokesperson told MarketWatch. "'Yellowstone' was created by the visionary Taylor Sheridan and launched on the Paramount Network seven years ago, where we transformed it into the No. 1 show on linear. We then maximized this No. 1 hit show with Taylor, turning it into a hit franchise that has been fueling Paramount+ both in the U.S. and around the globe.

"This strategy is about delivering the biggest hits on both linear and streaming, while building maximum value for the company and our shareholders centered around must-have IP," the spokesperson added.

Where goes SpinCo?

In the era of cord cutting, the audience for streaming and linear TV has increasingly grown apart. Most traditional cable customers are over the age of 55, according to the Pew Research Center. And more than 60% of millennial and Gen Z viewers are streaming only.

That has left TV companies wrestling with a tough equation: When, if ever, do they cut the cord on their own cable channels? While streaming is clearly the future, at the moment there is still money being made in cable through advertising and carriage fees paid by cable providers.

In an effort to address that reality, Comcast's NBCUniversal announced late last year it would spin off most of its cable properties into a new company, currently known as SpinCo, by the end of 2025.

Those properties - which include USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, E!, Syfy and the Golf Channel - together generate $7 billion in revenue and are profitable, the company says.

Yet few of those channels have any original programming anymore. On a recent day, USA Network, which 10 years ago was one of the top-rated cable channels, showed 21 straight hours of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" reruns. The only new programming that week consisted of a WWE broadcast and international soccer matches.

Mark Lazarus, the chief executive of SpinCo, said in an interview that for the past decade, the properties being spun off had seen their profits used to build NBC's streaming operation. Now, he said, that money can be reinvested into the channels themselves, including for new scripted and unscripted original programming, as well as for more sporting events.

Lazarus said most of the channels are still in the middle of longer-term deals for sports broadcasting rights and carriage-fee arrangements with cable providers, which will allow time for the new company to establish itself.

But the divide between scripted programming on streaming platforms and live events on linear TV has begun to break down. Now, more and more sports events are being shown on streaming services - like the Olympics on Peacock, and an increasing number of football, basketball, baseball and hockey games on a variety of streaming platforms.

Sports had been largely viewed as the last bastion for cable to retain viewers, and the slow erosion of its stranglehold raises serious questions about cable's long-term value proposition.

In February, ESPN and Major League Baseball opted out of their deal to broadcast games on Sunday night following this season, ending a 35-year partnership. Both sides said the decision was mutual, with the league saying the TV audience had been shrinking and ESPN saying the $550 million annual price tag had become too high.

Analysts at MoffettNathanson noted in a recent research report on cord cutting that several cable providers, like Comcast and AT&T Inc.'s $(T)$ DirecTV, had begun making available less expensive bundles that focused more specifically on sports and news programming - raising big questions about whether there is any future for scripted entertainment on cable TV.

Others, like Charter Communications Inc. $(CHTR)$, have been working toward offering some mix of traditional cable plus streaming services in a kind of superbundle.

"But will the strategy resonate with consumers? As always, it depends on price," MoffettNathanson concluded.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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April 12, 2025 08:30 ET (12:30 GMT)

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