With another evolutionary year for the television programming industry nearly over, it’s time to focus on trends the landscape might reveal in the new year. With the number of original scripted series expected to surpass the 500 mark and new distribution entrants like Apple launching new streaming services with original programming, here are five trends the industry should look at in 2019:

1. Time spent viewing content on the web will keep going up. This seems to be a no-brainer, given the trends in viewer behavior over the past few years, but 2019 will mark the closest that actual time viewing on the internet has come to matching the time spent viewing on traditional TV. Consumers are expected to watch 265.8 minutes a day of streaming content next year, per data from Zenith Media, up from 239.9 in 2018. In comparison, viewers will spend 271.5 hours watching TV in 2019, down from 276.8 minutes this year, according to Zenith. The media buyer projects that time spent watching streaming video will surpass that of traditional TV in 2020.

2. There will be more diversity behind the camera. Actors and actresses of color in lead roles in shows on cable, broadcast and streaming services increased in 2018, thanks to new series such as Showtime’s The Chi, BBC America’s Killing Eve and Starz’s Vida. In 2019, more people of color will take the reins as producers, directors and writers. Major production and development deals with the likes of Shonda Rhimes (Netflix), Tanya Saracho (Starz) and Lena Waithe (Showtime) should ensure more diversity behind the camera in 2019.

3. Networks will continue to experiment with live programming. Broadcast and cable networks will look to offer live specials and sports programming to keep viewers tethered to the traditional bundle while luring cable-cutters and cable-nevers away from the streaming services. From the Fox network’s buying rights to the WWE’s weekly SmackDown! pro wrestling series last May to the December launch of Discovery’s Border Live to the continued success of A&E’s Live PD, the industry will look to exploit live content to maintain and draw in new viewers.

4. New streaming sports services will compete for high-profile live sports content. Startup streaming sports service DAZN’s three-year, $300 million deal with Major League Baseball to create a daily, primetime show with live look-ins to games in progress was the latest in a series of eye-opening sports rights acquisitions by streaming services in 2018. ESPN and the new ESPN+ streaming service’s multiyear TV deal with UFC, wrestled away from Fox, and DAZN’s securing of TV rights for pay-per-view boxing stalwart Canelo Alvarez’s next 11 fights put streaming sports services on the playing field for live marquee events. Despite some highprofile technical hiccups such as Bleacher Report Live’s streaming issues with the Nov. 16 Tiger Woods vs. Phil Mickelson pay-per-view golf match, look for sports streaming services to pick off small and midsized sports packages before becoming competitive bidders for the more high-profile packages from the major sports leagues in 2020 and beyond.

5. Traditional television networks launch more original content on the web to reach millennials and cord-cutters. Cable networks will continue take their branded content to social media sites like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat in an effort to reach nonsubscribers and millennials. MTV in 2018 used SnapChat to reboot some classic shows such as Cribs and Girl Code, and it’s planning to launch other shows from sister services BET and Comedy Central in 2019. Meanwhile, networks will look to push original premieres to the web first in an effort to entice viewers to come back to the linear channel for other content. Discovery’s MotorTrend Network (rebranded from Velocity) said it will premiere new episodes of all original shows on the Motor- Trend streaming site before they air on the linear channel. And CBS All Access will continue to roll out original programming — including a Twilight Zone reboot — to complement episode libraries of the broadcast network’s original shows.

With 2018 winding down, here are five technology forecasts that will impact the cable industry, along with the broader media and telecom industries, in 2019.

1. Netflix is in for a bad year. Netflix has long been preparing for the day when key programming suppliers such as WarnerMedia and The Walt Disney Co. build their own streaming platforms and no longer license its content. That is, of course, what its multibillion-dollar investment in original shows has all been about.

That strategy is about to be put to the test.

WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey suggested to analysts earlier this month that Netflix’s library will “thin out” as WarnerMedia and Disney launch their platforms next year, and that can’t be good news. According to a study just published by Parrot Analytics and Kagan, Netflix originals still don’t even generate half of the platform’s total viewing.

“Netflix has been great at developing a lot of content, but what it hasn’t been great at is the traditional, Hollywood style of marketing and creating enough buzz around shows,” Omar Akhtar, an analyst for the San Francisco-based Altimeter Group, told Yahoo Finance earlier this year. “That’s not where their budgets lie. They’d rather spend on great content.”

2. A major virtual multichannel video programming distributor will go away. Virtual pay TV services ended 2017 on a tear, with leaders Sling TV and DirecTV Now adding 711,000 and 888,000 users last year, respectively.

But the market is too crowded. Rising program costs are driving up monthly bills and squeezing margins, which are already too tight.

Growth has ground to a halt. In fact, AT&T recently announced that it is raising prices on DirecTV Now and cutting back on programming.

Though he was careful not to lump his startup in with struggling corporately backed competitors, fuboTV co-founder and CEO David Gandler told Multichannel News that at least one vMVPD could fold it up in 2019.

“If you can’t figure out how to make money on this, why would you do it?” Gandler said. “I think you’re going to see people saying, ‘Either I missed something, or we’re not executing.’ I would anticipate that there will be companies that will have to rethink their strategy.”

3. 5G will move beyond mere hype. While 2018 has been festooned with plenty of 5G hype (see Cover Story), we’re set to see plenty of real-world deployment in 2019.

According to Deloitte, more than 1 million 5G handsets and another 1 million 5G modems will be sold next year.

“It won’t happen overnight, but 5G will profoundly change our interactions and experiences, which is good news for consumers as they demand better performance and more access to content,” Deloitte analyst Kevin Westcott said.

4. Cable will begin to commercially deploy Full Duplex DOCSIS. With the fresh cycle of 5G hype spurring discussions about speeds in excess of 1 Gigabit per second, cable will respond with its own next-generation network technology standard, Full Duplex DOCSIS.

CableLabs, which led development of FDX, believes the technology could be used to deliver 10 Gbps speeds, both upstream and downstream, in the next few years.

For its part, Arris expects to start commercial deployment of Full Duplex hardware and software toward the end of 2019.

5. The pay TV set-top business is in for major changes. Roiled by cord-cutting and a move to cloud-based video systems that favor thin-client customer premises equipment, the pay TV set-top business is on the ropes. By this time next year, all or most of the major current vendors could be sold.

Last month, Technicolor SA, which paid $2.1 billion in 2015 for the Cisco Systems set-top unit, said it is in preliminary talks to sell all or part of itself. Not only has Technicolor’s pay TV operator client base consolidated, it’s also grappling with the global shortage of critical electronic parts, most notably multilayer ceramic capacitors.

Meanwhile, CommScope, which is in the process of buying No. 1 set-top vendor Arris, said recently that it’s still trying to figure out what to do with “one of the more maligned” elements of Arris’s portfolio.