• New York Times, Monday, April 8, 2013 10:55 AM

Two takes on cord-cutting, both from the New  York Times: Jenna Wortham discusses how video subscription services are handling the current trend of sharing password information, which "appears increasingly prevalent among Web-savvy people who don’t own televisions or subscribe to cable." Most subscription services don't allow more than one account holder to watch at one time, but they should wise up and allow family plans, for example, so "entertainment companies’ business models evolve in tandem with users’ habits," writes Wortham.

Vikas Bajaj explains how he was able to survive without cable or satellite TV for several months by using Netflix, Amazon Prime, and itTunes, though he knows he'll  "want ESPN during college football season and you can’t get that on Netflix. And it’s still hard for online video services to beat cable’s selection of current shows and movies. But what happens to cable when technology and non-cable media companies close these gaps?" he writes.

"It appears that cable TV may be in the early stages of a transition that began in the telephone business more than a decade ago when Americans started giving up their land lines and began relying mostly on cellphones. That change took time to gather momentum but then became unstoppable."

Read the whole story at New York Times »