Streaming television is the internet-based delivery of TV shows and films over-the-top (OTT), bypassing traditional cable, satellite, and broadcast networks—with episodes typically lasting 30–60 minutes and films running 90–120 minutes. Its rise has been meteoric: by 2023 it accounted for 38% of global TV viewing with 1.8 billion subscriptions, and it became the dominant viewing method in the United States in 2024, overtaking cable and network TV by 2025 (with Netflix leading at over 325 million subscribers). The technology's origins trace back to the mid-1990s, when advances in MPEG video compression and ADSL made it feasible; the first live-streamed event was a 1995 baseball game on ESPN SportsZone, and the first exclusively internet-based TV station, TVonline, launched in 2003. The mid-2000s brought key breakthroughs, including the 2005 launch of YouTube (inspired by the 2004 Super Bowl incident and Indian Ocean tsunami) and Netflix's shift from DVD rentals to streaming in 2007, alongside the introduction of HTTP-based adaptive streaming which revolutionized the industry. Today, streaming services are offered via paid subscriptions or free ad-supported tiers, with platforms like Amazon Prime Video (starting as Amazon Unbox in 2006) joining the fray, cementing streaming as the new standard for television consumption.