ABC Will Offer Mobile Livestreaming Because It's Afraid of the Future

In an attempt to cater to the changing habits of TV viewers, ABC will now live stream its programming on mobile devices. The Watch ABC app is now available in New York and Philadelphia, with expansions planned for coming months, and offers national, local and some on-demand channels, The New York Times reported yesterday.

In reality, ABC’s move is less about adapting to the future of television than it is about trying to prevent it, by stopping viewers from cord cutting—severing ties with oppressive and expensive cable packages (which of course include the broadcast networks)—which is becoming more popular in a world with Netflix, Hulu, and premium YouTube. After a free trial period through June, the live stream will only be available to dish or cable subscribers.

But let me back up. The idea that traditional, linear TV is dead and dying comes as no great shock. We expect—we demand—to watch shows anytime, anywhere, and on any device. And free, or at least really cheap. Streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon dangled this possibility in front of us, and now hope to lure people away from the cable bundle. And they’re doing a pretty good job; House of Cards helped Netflix soar to 30 million subscribers this year.

The cable companies fired back by giving viewers a little more of what we want with the “TV everywhere” approach—think HBO Go, or the ability to watch network shows online after they've aired. (To its credit, ABC was ahead of the other networks on this front, too.)

But when it comes down to the numbers, viewers are pretty damn hooked on old-school, live television, watching nearly 35 hours of TV a week, according to Nielsen. This is why Aereo is so interesting as a cable alternative. It still offers live programming from some 30 broadcast channels, via the internet and on mobile, at just $8-12 per month. That's quite a drop from, say, Time Warner Cable’s soul-crushing $60 per month package.

Personally, I couldn't be less excited about live streaming ABC shows. The shows are already available to watch on Hulu or ABC.com, and they aren’t even any good. Not being a huge sports fan, little is lost if I watch a program an hour or even a week after it first aired at my convenience.

If you ask me, the company that will conquer the future of the industry and collect its multi-billion-dollar prize will be the one that finally cracks a la carte. The biggest problem with TV today isn’t that we want to watch it on our smartphone, it’s that we’re force-fed cable packages with hundreds of channels we don’t want to watch at all.

This would totally disrupt the powerful cable model, which is largely why it hasn't gained momentum yet despite obvious consumer demand. (Remember the Take My Money, HBO campaign?) But the media giants are inching closer. Apple TV and Google’s YouTube are slowly making their way toward the a la carte model.

The trick could be simple consolidation. If you cobble together all the streaming options available now—a few key YouTube channels, Aereo for network TV, ABC’s live app, a Netflix account—you can probably get almost all the TV you want for still way less money than a cable package. But who has the time? (Has anyone tried?) Someone needs to step in and make it convenient, user-friendly and slick.

In the meantime, ABC's decision to live stream its programs on mobile won’t revolutionize the TV industry, but it is likely it’ll keep the 70-year-old television network in the game a bit longer.