Those time shifting shows appear on broadcast tv across the nation in different time zones. They are not cable channels but broadcast channels appearing in cable. A tv antenia will pick them up.
The timeshifting is the tv stations defense of segmenting their ad market and protecting against local viewer loss that targets ads to markets.
If you in New York watch Denver's version two things happen. New York loses viewers. Denver gains viewers who's local ads are not relevant and those viewers not included when selling ads.
Sorry, there must be some overlapping terminology.
I mean time shifting as in what devices such as TiVo did where they would record your shows for you and allow them to play them back whenever you wanted. For some reason Cable companies really hated this idea, presumably because... ads I guess?
I think that if they simply hadn't fought against people trying to basically turn what they already provided into something more like Netflix, those tools would exist and be built with a cable package as a backend.
They provide all the shows in a datastream that they would otherwise provide via cable, let other people deal with paying for developing devices to make it easier to use, and price it more reasonably so that it can compete with a Netflix. I don't know if they'd be able to, but since they own the pipes and own the FCC it seems more likely than not. But they'd be doing a lot better than they seem to be now, they just priced themselves out of the market once networks realized that people would just download their content for free if it was too inconvenient to watch. Better a little than nothing...
The timeshifting is the tv stations defense of segmenting their ad market and protecting against local viewer loss that targets ads to markets.
If you in New York watch Denver's version two things happen. New York loses viewers. Denver gains viewers who's local ads are not relevant and those viewers not included when selling ads.