No, the Sky Isn't Falling for the Cable Industry

[Commentary] The media has a deep and abiding bias towards negative stories, particularly when they’re about the supposed death of its own industry. Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about the permanent collapse of cable television. Cable television is currently suffering the death of a thousand cord-cutters -- or is it?

Streaming video platforms continue to explode in popularity -- all the major channels that haven’t yet announced an over-the-top platform have one in the works. But as Holman Jenkins recently noted in The Wall Street Journal, ”Shows do not become less valuable to viewers when viewers can control when and how to watch them.” Television viewers aren’t going anywhere -- they’re just demanding different digital services, and different ways of paying for the content they actually want to watch. The old 500-channel bundle, for instance, is going away. Saying goodbye to it might be painful in the short term (most cable subscribers only watch nine percent of what’s available anyway), but it will eventually unlock more more smart, focused content bundles and revenue opportunities. We’re in the midst of a broad global shift from a manufacturing economy where companies sold products to strangers in isolated transactions, to a subscription-based economy where companies engage in ongoing relationships with their consumers. And the media industry has been at this game for a very long time. So yes, things are definitely in flux, but the reports of cable TV’s death remain greatly exaggerated.

[Tien Tzuo is the CEO of Zuora]