Billionaire Gabelli joins millennials Transition from Cable TV to On Demand on Mobile Devices

The younger generation who are into technological products, otherwise called millennials, are cutting off their Cable TV as they prefer to watch movies and TV show on demand on their mobile devices. However, it is not just the younger generation as 73-year old value investor and billionaire Mario Gabelli is also joining this migration.

In a report by Reuters, Gabelli, who is the Rye GAMCO Investors Inc. chief executive officer, said he was shocked to see the outrageous amount he has to pay for his cable bill, so he decided that he will cut the cable TV cord. He talked about the fast changing landscape of technology, the media, and cable during the Reuters Global Investment Summit held in New York Thursday.

The massive shift of millennials from watching shows on cable to on demand streaming on their mobile devices has reshaped how the media, its creators, and its distributors do business. Gibelli believed that more people will dump their expensive cable or satellite subscription for more affordable online packages.

According to Fortune, research firm MoffettNathanson, the US pay-TV tracker of subscriber numbers, recently reported their third-quarter results, which shows that pay-TV providers lost another 350,000 subscribers in three months that ended September.

Meanwhile, in a report by Investors, Leichtman Research Group revealed that Comcast, with 22.2 million subscribers, lost about 48,000 subscribers in the third quarter, while Time Warner Cable, with 11 million subscribers, lost 5,000.

With this significant change in viewership preference, Gabelli expects there would be some rounds of consolidation in the cable industry and in the media. Cablevision System Corp, which is one of the major holdings of the Gabelli Asset Fund and the Gabelli Value 25 Fund, was recently sold to Patrick Drahi's Altice for a value of $17.7 billion. Meanwhile, HBO owner Time Warner Inc. recently declined a take over from Twenty-First Century Fox Inc in 2014, but Gabelli expects the giant media company to be part of a deal any time soon.