that chart shows the price of TVs as basically approaching free over time, but that doesn't include cable or internet, which in earlier times were not necessary to have a functioning TV
Are you watching more TV though? Probably not. I had "modern" cable maybe 4 years ago. 500 channels or however many in the package, not really sure, but it was pretty much the works. It looked really impressive on the bill seeing all those channels, but in reality you are only using like the same few dozen or so major channels you've been coming to since the 90s and you just scroll on past the remaining 470 channels of pure junk garbage like QVC and clones, local news in varying states of HD, gem shows, highschool sports, etc.
A lot of the channels are definitely not useful for me. Probably 1/3 of them are in languages I don't speak, and then there's the junk you mentioned like QVC.
I mostly use it for sports and local news. The quality is actually pretty good. Even though I can stream through the ESPN app, I'll watch a football game on ABC when I can because the picture quality is significantly better.
just the other day i was walking through an appliances market and was astonished how you could get huge TVs for less than what i spent on my phone. of course they probably all come with some sort of advertising that you can't turn off, but still...
unfortunately not. at least our tv has an ad in the boot sequence. the content is benign, about more products from the same manufacturer, but it comes with an obnoxiously loud jingle that i always have to rush to turn down the volume before my ears bleed
This might also be a small town to major city thing, but I have about as many channels OTA now as we had with pre-satellite basic cable twenty plus years ago.
