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It’s December, which means two things. You’re going to hear a lot of Bruce Springsteen singing “Merry Christmas Baby,” and you’re going to see a lot of reflections on the significance of the year almost-past. And who are we to break from tradition? Each day this month, we will roll out new nuggets of wisdom gleaned from 2015, alphabetized for your reading pleasure.

C is for cordcutting

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Let’s face it, the days of 300 channels, even in an era of PVR, are starting to feel like they belong in the past. And this was the first year cordcutting started to seem like a legitimately viable alternative.

In 2015, the perfect storm of cheap Internet, ballooning cable costs and the rise of quality content and convenience lead to a new era in how we consume television. Streaming content providers like Netflix became the standard, offering commercial-free service and an unprecedented string of critically lauded, watercooler-friendly, consumer oriented programming – Daredevil, Narcos, Master of None, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, to name a few – at a fraction of the price of the cable providers. And the numbers suggest the long-suffering, overpaying cable-subscribing Canadian television viewer is jumping ship at a faster clip than ever.

According to Ottawa-based research company Boon Dog Professional Services, Canadian broadcasters lost subscribers at a rate six times faster this year over last, jumping from 19,200 in the first half of fiscal 2014 to 113,000. And those numbers will inevitably continue to rise.