It could take as little as five years for television as we know it -- broadcast and cable -- to enter its final death throes, according to census statistics and a recent report from analysts at Credit Suisse. The culprit: young people and new households who just aren't interested in signing up for paid cable and satellite TV service.

Credit Suisse analyst Stefan Anninger wrote in a recent report on TV media that 200,000 fewer subscribers will pay for TV services in 2012, and that of 1.8 million new households formed last year only 16.9% of them signed up for pay-TV services. Previously, Anninger had forecast a rise in the number of TV subscribers buoyed by the slowly growing