My grandparents have full access to every major streaming platform now, we set all of them up properly on their television ourselves a while back specifically so they could actually watch whatever they genuinely wanted whenever they wanted, without needing to wait around for anything specific to actually air on a fixed traditional schedule the way television used to work.
Despite that full and genuine access, they still religiously watch their same specific traditional channels at the exact same fixed times every single day without any real deviation, rearranging their entire schedule around specific show timings the exact same way they apparently have for decades now, largely ignoring the streaming options entirely that we specifically set up for their actual convenience.
Asked my grandmother directly about this once, genuinely curious why she does not just watch whatever she wants whenever she personally feels like it instead, and her answer was refreshingly simple and direct, she said having a fixed, reliable, unchanging schedule to actually look forward to each day gives her day itself a genuine, comforting sense of structure that endless, unlimited streaming choice apparently just does not provide her personally in quite the same specific way.
That framing genuinely made me reconsider my own fairly dismissive initial assumption that unlimited streaming choice is automatically and obviously better for absolutely everyone in every single case, for her specifically, the actual constraint itself is clearly the genuine point and the actual source of comfort, not some limitation to be overcome or worked around at all.
A few friends mentioned their own grandparents follow a genuinely similar specific pattern, suggesting this particular generational preference for fixed schedules over unlimited streaming choice is honestly fairly widespread rather than just something unique to my own specific family situation.
Do other people's older relatives show this exact same specific loyalty to traditional fixed channel schedules despite having full streaming access available, and do you think that particular preference is really about genuine comfort with structure, or simply more familiarity with an older, more established way of actually doing things generally?