From cord-cutters to cord-nevers
An outtake with Jay Onrait, and an afterthought on cable TV
Welcome to Human Pursuits, the column that features need-to-know names and stories in media and other creative spaces. Today, an outtake from my conversation with sportscaster Jay Onrait, and an afterthought on cable television connection.
Read part one of our conversation here.
Outtake
ES: I’m really fixated on your commute. What do you listen to when you drive? Radio? Silence?
JO: Never silence. I always play music on the way to work, and then usually a podcast on the way back.
ES: A little cool down.
JO: Yeah. I remember when I started doing late-night highlight shows in 1998, I would drive home listening to ESPN Radio’s AllNight with Jason Smith, and it was so comforting. I mimic that sensation with podcasts.
ES: You do a fair bit of interviews, but I haven’t seen many people ask you about music. What’s your rotation looking like? I see you follow Father John Misty and Sloan on Instagram.
JO: I run the gamut from the 90s to the 2020s. It’s a lot of indie rock. A little bit of jazz. I find myself listening to a lot of instrumental funk lately. My favourite album of this year by far is Surprise Chef’s new album, Superb. They’re from Australia. They’re a six or seven-piece thing. No vocals whatsoever. Just the tunes. I think they’re sensational.
ES: How do you rate yourself as a dancer? Feels like that’s an album you need to move to.
JO: I have good rhythm, but I don’t know that I would call myself good at dancing. That said, I’ll absolutely do it. I’m not shy about it. I'll get out and rip it up, especially to tunes that inspire me.
In the case of Surprise Chef, this is their 4th album, and they describe it as the first one you can dance to. I wholeheartedly agree. I was dancing to it last night.
ES: I’m sensing you’re a bit of an old-school cat. Do you still pay for a cable subscription?
JO: I do.
ES: Same – it’s the best.
JO: I love it. I think it’s great. I still get a lot of value out of it, you know? It’s a no-brainer for me.
I love that term cord-nevers. Adam Silver used that a couple of months ago. We’ve gone from cord-cutters to cord-nevers. A lot of kids are growing up now without cable in their homes, and they’re certainly not getting it when they leave home. That’s a big difference, particularly within the industry. 10 years ago, most kids who went to broadcast school at least grew up with cable. Now we’re getting into a generation that doesn’t have it, and it’s affecting us.
We generally hire our writers from big broadcast programs across the country, and what we’ve been finding is that kids come in with less knowledge about the sports media landscape. We’ll say, “Hey, do that Nashville Predators and Columbus Blue Jackets game,” and they’ll reply, “I’ve never watched a hockey game before. I have NBA League Pass and I’m a Toronto Raptors fan.” That’s what they watch, that’s what they’re into. Laughs. It sort of blows you away. This is a person who wants to be a sportscaster. Growing up with cable allowed me to know a little bit of everything.
I think the leagues are going to have to deal with it, to a certain extent. I’m noticing it more. Think about baseball. “America’s Pastime.” How do you get someone in Coquitlam, B.C., to care about a Chicago Cubs game on a random Tuesday in July? It’s a difficult proposal. There are so many avenues for people to enjoy sports; they don’t need to pay attention to things they don’t care about anymore. It’s a weird dilemma. It’s a specific dilemma, for us and the leagues, but it’s a real problem for some sports, I think.
Afterthought
I think I would rather throw my television away than have to rely solely on streaming services for my viewing needs. I know this is extreme and completely out of step with the times. I also know that I love cable. It’s not perfect by any means, but it is reliable, instantaneous, and better for discovery than most streaming services.
The tired argument is that, as streamers look to increase profitability by introducing ad-supported subscription tiers, we’re basically recreating a worse version of traditional television; one that is fairly affordable, but with a lot of ads and increasingly limited content libraries. Jay’s observation about cord-nevers, though, speaks to the less discussed issue of how streaming leaves consumers siloed within their own niche set of interests.
Netflix, Disney Plus, and Hulu shine when you know exactly which program you want to watch and which provider it lives on. But they’re almost incapable of replicating the feeling of surfing channels and landing on something unexpected. A few months ago, for example, Leah and I were flipping around when we landed on Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. I had never seen it before, and it made my night. Great flick.
Beyond basic discoverability, though, the friction that comes with traditional media binds us together. You sit through SportsCentre waiting for Raptors highlights and learn that the Edmonton Oilers lost in overtime to the Dallas Stars. That knowledge may mean nothing to you in the moment, but it could be an icebreaker at work the next day. It’s corny, but these little things matter. They connect us to a shared reality.
Try as we might, life is never going to completely cater to our needs. It’s important to stick your head outside of the silo every now and then. To to see what everyone is up to. It’s not just a cord — it’s a tether.