But here is the discovery: Broadcast medium’s “hook” is the sense of immediacy. You watch it because it’s “what’s on”, and you even allow it, somewhat, to control your schedule. And yet, as I learned with the unwatched recordings, when you can watch it at your leisure, you may not ever watch it at all. That’s what I love about Streaming. You only watch what you actually want to see, not, “what’s on right now”.
You have been away from TV for a long time. It's not that way any longer. For one, most cable or satellite packages include a DVR. This is basically a hard drive that records digital programs. My wife and I seldom watch "what's on now" unless it is something like a live event (like the Masters tournament yesterday) or cooking and HGTV shows that she likes as time-wasting programs. Everything else is DVR'd (we have DirecTV) to watch when we feel like it and we zip through commercials. DVRs work better than old VHS. They have little "jump" buttons so you can "jump" 30 seconds ahead, making it easy to skip commercials. When I get home this evening, we will watch the DVR'd episode of today's Jeopardy (which I do not think is availabel to stream).
Also, many shows are available to watch "on demand", which is a lot like streaming. I also have Roku and Apple TV streaming players.
Yes. I know about DVR. I almost brought it up and said the modern version of my VCR experience is DVR.