Greatly Exaggerated: The Death of Linear TV
I wish I had a nickel for every article I've read announcing the “Death of Linear TV.”
Is there nonlinear TV? Choose your own adventure programming? No, there’s not.
Generally, when someone talks about linear TV dying they are really talking about the growth of people watching streaming versus broadcast. The real difference is not that one is linear and the other is nonlinear. The difference is content being broadcast on the broadcaster's schedule, versus content on demand. So a much better way to describe this shift is the growth in on-demand content versus broadcast, not the dramatic shift in how content is created, delivered, packaged, or consumed that the “death of linear TV” would suggest.
Now that we’ve established what these "Death of" articles are actually talking about, let’s analyze it. If you look at this pie chart, produced by Evan Shapiro’s ESHAP, and add up the well-established broadcast methods of Over The Air (OTA), cable, and satellite, “Broadcast” dominates versus all of the streaming platforms, combined. So the death of linear is greatly exaggerated.
Source: ESHAP.tv
People try to use these charts to show that because the “streaming” slices of the pie chart are growing, “Linear TV” (i.e. broadcast) is dying. But those who make these arguments are overlooking two very important considerations.
Broadcast TV Streamed Is Still Broadcast
First, a good chunk of the viewing happening on the streaming side is actually broadcast TV carried on streaming platforms. YouTube TV, which the “linear is dead” crowd likes to count as streaming. Likewise broadcast TV on Prime, Tubi, Sling, Fubo, DirectTV, Hulu, Pluto, Philo, live TV on Peacock, Plex, and more. All are marked in the streaming column, and all are live, broadcast TV just delivered via streaming platform—hardly evidence of linear TV’s decline.
I'll admit that there are less eyes on OTA, cable, and satellite broadcast TV than there were a decade ago. But a big percentage of those viewers are now watching the exact same content via streaming platforms. So the aggregate streaming slice of the pie is growing, but not at the expense of broadcast linear TV. The pie chart is misleading you when it doesn't break out any of the broadcast content on the streaming platforms. The YouTube TV chunk of the YouTube slice belongs on the broadcast side. Same with Hulu, Prime, Roku, etc.
Broadcast TV On Demand Is Still Broadcast TV
A more revealing pie chart would delineate between broadcast TV, where you pick the channel, but not the program, versus on-demand content delivered via streaming platform. But even here the “death of linear” overlooks a second issue: The vast, vast majority of streamed content is/was still broadcast linear TV programming. You can watch NCIS live, or stream it the next day via Hulu. I can watch Avengers Endgame on FX, or hunt it down on Disney+. Everyone talking about linear TV’s untimely death overlooks the simple fact that it's the same linear TV content, just delivered on different platforms at different times.
Again, the difference is really, broadcast content delivered on the broadcaster's schedule, versus content on demand. Both are linear, but with one you pick a channel, and with the other, you pick the show.
We may even have reached a new balance, as streaming platforms cut back their spend on original programming because the ROI isn’t there. Streamers’ traditional approach of holding onto streaming platform content as tightly as possible to force viewers to subscribe to watch it is crumbling. HBO Max pulled Westworld from the platform in 2023 because it was costing more to keep it available than it was generating in subscriptions. Amazon announced in April that features made by Amazon Prime will all now go to theaters first, and why not? Why lose out on theatrical revenue you can get in addition to streaming revenue they know they’re going to have? Heck, Tubi broadcast the Superbowl in 2025 and didn’t even require viewers to pay at all. In fact, Tubi doesn’t even normally require viewers to create an account to watch.
Why?
Because streaming platforms are realizing once again that eyeballs deliver greater dollars than subscriptions. Ads are appearing more and more, even on paid subscriptions. Don’t you find it ironic that streaming companies “invented” free ad-supported television with the catchy acronym FAST some 80 years after broadcasters introduced paid advertising on TV?
So take with a grain of salt any post that talks about the "Death of Linear TV." Viewers are watching linear TV on YouTube TV. They’re watching linear TV on Twitch, on Hulu, on Disney, on Prime, and more. People are watching linear TV on all sorts of streaming platforms. Regardless of the underlying technology used to deliver it, it’s all linear TV programming, and linear TV is alive and well.
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