ALFRED HITCHCOCK once compared television to indoor plumbing. “It didn’t change people’s habits,” said the master of cinematic suspense. “It just kept them inside the house.” If television chained entertainment-junkies to the couch, online video has now released their shackles. Faster broadband, the rise of mobile phones and tablet devices, and services like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube that stream shows to people anywhere with an internet connection have freed viewers to watch programmes wherever they wish.
Pay-television executives have also chosen to take part in this liberation movement, by offering their subscribers “TV everywhere”. Their companies give their customers an access code that lets them watch channels streamed live—or individual shows on demand—on their mobile devices, much as they can on Netflix or Hulu. These days almost every TV operator in America, and many elsewhere in the world, offer subscribers something along these lines, says Ben Reneker of SNL Kagan, a research firm.
