By Life is tough for college students, especially without the luxury of having lots of money. From limiting the amount of laundry you do, to rationing a meal, every dollar must be stretched to make it to the next load of clean clothes or pack of ramen noodles.
In this ever-evolving age of technology, students can now budget how they watch TV.
On-demand streaming sites such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, have become the dominant source of television programs and movie viewing for millennials, and for good reason.
According to a study done by the National Association of Television Program Executives and the Content First and Consumer Electronics Association, 51 percent of millennials believe that a Netflix subscription is more useful than broadcast channels or a cable subscription.
Although a cable subscription brings with it television shows that air oftentimes months before the shows are available on Netflix, the benefits outweigh the cost for the streaming services Netflix offers.
For the simple Standard TV package with around 70 channels form Time Warner Cable, the cost is $45 per month. Compare that to a Netflix or Hulu subscription at $8 per month or Amazon Prime at $100 per year.
Reagan Childers, a junior English major at Cal State University, Long Beach, loves Netflix because of the wide variety of shows that it offers. The only downside, Childers believes, is that people have to wait a long time for a show’s next season.
“I think Netflix is awesome,” Childers said. “In some ways, it is better [than cable television] because you can binge watch shows.”
According to Netflix, there are over 62 million members in more than 50 countries who stream hours and hours of Netflix’s offered TV shows and movies.
Netflix, Hulu and Amazon also offer far more than basic cable does. People can watch a wide variety of movies, from comedies to documentaries, which may never air on TV. Netflix subscribers can also choose among a range of different TV shows as many times as they want, even if it has been taken off of the original channel it aired on.
But one thing that Netflix, Hulu and Amazon do not offer is a sports channel. While some sporting events are broadcasted on the basic cable channels, according to the Wall Street Journal, it is an extra cost of about $6 a month just for ESPN. Those subscribers would still have to pay for ESPN2, the NFL Network and Fox Sports 1.
According to Time magazine, the average person watches an average of 141 hours of live television a month in 2014, down 12 minutes from 2013. With the rise of streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, 2.8 million American households are broadband only, meaning they do not receive a cable or broadcast subscription. Broadband-only viewers make up almost three percent of the population, not a high number, but that has just about doubled from 2013 data.
As a college student who has to worry about paying for tuition, fees, rent and food, being able to pay only $8 dollars for an abundant amount of binge-worthy television makes streaming services the perfect choice for dinner-in-bed TV.
