Our family cancelled our Netflix account today. We've cut the (TV) cord after we moved into our house and decided against spending $100 per month on cable TV services. It just wasn't in the budget and seemed like an easy luxury to cut along with a newspaper subscription. The digital world is most definitely changing the way we consume content, step by step, value proposition by value proposition.
Instead, we installed a cheap $25 antenna to local channels that are within 20 miles of our house. We can't pickup the US stations in Buffalo, but that would require a multi hundred dollar installation as well. Do we miss those stations? Not really.
Instead what we've decided to do is shape our habits and become selective about what we consume. Just like a food diet, a TV/News/Media consumption diet is good for the soul. You spend less time on the couch. You are more selective about what you choose -- you listen to advice, curation and your gut feel about putting less junk into your diet.
The result is fantastic. With our AppleTV (we'll soon have 2), a Synology Diskstation and an OTA antenna we get the best entertainment money can buy. We rent videos only when they make sense and are compelling on Bluray, we only watch TV shows we can easily buy on iTunes.
With HBO Go recently launching on Xbox 360, it seems that the likely way consumers like us will be appeased is with apps that live stream content and make archives available for a monthly or yearly fee. Each app will feature a show or a network of shows. Anything less is unacceptable in this age, so it's just a matter of figuring out a transition path in terms of pricing and packaging.