NBC's CEO has 5 kids and none of them pay for TV
Getty/Jemal Countess
NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke is one of the most powerful people in the TV business, but his own kids don't pay for traditional TV.
Burke has five "millennial" children, ages 19 to 28, and exactly "none" subscribe to cable or satellite, he said at a conference on Wednesday.
Five!
Analyst Rich Greenfield, who is pessimistic about the future of cable, relayed the anecdote to Business Insider.
There has been a lot of debate in the last few years about "cord-cutting," with some people saying it's a narrative sensationalized by the media, and others seeing it as the inevitable preference of younger generations.
But there has been some recent evidence that the decline of cable is not a myth.
"It's undeniable that traditional pay-TV subscribers are in decline," Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch told Business Insider in a recent interview. Lynch is a biased source, as his company is positioned to take advantage of people's frustration with the current cable system. But the subscriber losses in pay TV he highlighted are fact. They totaled over 800,000 last quarter, according to the research firm SNL Kagan.
Companies from Hulu to AT&T to Amazon are reportedly readying TV products designed to snag young people who watch a lot of video, but don't want the traditional cable bundle.
Perhaps Burke's kids are among them.
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