Netflix’s CEO is ready for TV to die

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The streaming service wants linear TV to go away. Reed Hastings said in the investor call that he was confident that the company was in a great place because linear TV was going to be dead in 5 to 10 years.

Hastings is rewarded with money for saying this. The set of totally free streaming channels that beam into any TV with an antenna is one of the biggest competitors for the largest streaming service on the planet.

The streaming service needs linear TV to die in order to survive. The company lost 1.3 million subscribers in the last three months in the US and Canada. It has more than 220 million paying customers around the world. It has an incoming ad-supported tier, which won't include all the content you get now, and it will try and end the practice of account sharing. When you have a lot of subscribers, you need your competitors to do worse. Hastings wants linear TV to start.

Is it realistic to think that it will happen? It is certain that TV ratings are down. The power of the broadcast TV stations waned after the increase in original content on cable TV. Despite going from an average of 20 million viewers per episode to four million, Grey's is still one of the most watched shows in the US.

Broadcast TV is free. It is not necessary for you to pay for internet and a subscription fee. If you have an antenna, you can turn on your TV and get a lot of good content. The Office, Friends, Grey's, and CW's entire lineup of teen dramas were some of the most consumed content before licensing agreements saw them bounce off to other services.

The broadcast TV industry is about to get a major upgrade. The new standard for broadcast television promises all sorts of quality improvements if it can provide at all. 4K and 120 frames per second are supported. I wonder if it even knows what 4K is because it's so slow to roll out.

Linear TV has broadcast TV as one of its free elements. Even though streaming was supposed to save us from outrageous fees, we still subscribe to all the cable channels. The least obnoxious way to watch sports is cable, and it's the fastest and most high-quality service for watching TV that is otherwise limited to a single app that may or may not be any good.

One of the most comforting features of linear TV is the entire airing of content. A never-ending stream can be used as a gentle background noise in your day to day life. I would love to have the ability to make a playlists on netflix, but I would also love to have an app that forgets I started the day before.

The linear TV is not doing as well as the streaming service. When streaming continues to have so many issues, how is linear TV supposed to die? It feels like streaming is trying to get away from linear TV. Reed Hastings wants it to die in a 5 to 10 year period.

There is a series produced by The Verge with the internet service provider.