I grew up watching a lot of television, and as I got older, I realized so did most. Whether it was “SpongeBob SquarePants” or “Jimmy Neutron,” everybody else had seen the same shows as me. For parents at home, it was easy to turn on the TV to one of the kids’ channels to and let them sit down and watch.

However, in today’s world, it seems to have become a lot more common to use premium services like Netflix and Hulu to watch any show you want, when you want. At first glance, this seems a lot easier and more convenient. Moving forward, I hope that as these premium services rise, they do not completely overrun cable television.

The worst thing that comes out of this would be the death of live television. If cable does go out of use and we eventually all switch to services through the internet, this would encourage a lot more prerecorded videos of entertainment like news and talk shows. The live news may be switched to something that’s streamed online.

However, I feel like this doesn’t help news channels as they then transition to something more online, where people will view based on the titles of the video rather than just watching and seeing all different types of news.

It takes away from people simply sitting down and enjoying whatever coverage the channel provides, like a profile of a local family that has been in the community for 50 years.

I remember watching new episodes of my favorite cartoon and then talking to my friends the next day about the show we all watched. This sense of unity will be taken away with people just watching the shows whenever they want.

With some shows, they even release the whole season at once. This doesn’t allow for everyone to watch one episode and then speculate on what is coming next week.

Rather, it allows some people to watch the whole season in one night, while others need a week or so to watch the whole thing. It takes away from those who enjoy watching things together at the same time all over the country.

Cable television provides something unique, and I would be sad to see it go away. Seeing the whole family sit down at 6 p.m. every day to watch a certain TV show was one of my favorite events as a child, and seeing that possibly not being in the future is something I do not want.

I truly hope people are still interested in cable television.

With cable, we can continue watching shows live, like breaking news coverage, and share those moments together as a country. And of course, as I grew up with the same cartoons as everyone else, I hope future generations get that experience as well.

Sriram is a junior in Engineering.

[email protected]