TV Is Dead. Long Live TV!
Is TV dying?
Vint Cerf, who helped to build the internet while working as a researcher in America, said that television was approaching its “iPod moment”
In the same way that people now download their favourite music onto their iPod, he said that viewers would soon be downloading most of their favourite programmes onto their computers…
Over the next four years, it is thought that the number of videos watched over the internet will quadruple, with people moving from short clips to hour-long programmes. (The Telegraph)
I watch very little TV, mostly because it’s utter rubbish. Far more than ever before, people my age are turning off the television - and booting up the computer instead. I already stream most of programmes I watch from TV Links or watch them on DVDs - that way, I get what I want, when I want it. I am not dictated to by TV schedules or anything else. It also has a great selection of old programmes which are no longer shown on TV, so I have a far greater choice over what I watch as well as well as when I watch it.
I don’t even watch the TV news very often any more. I get my news from the internet sites of the BBC and newspapers and from blogs rather than the half-hour condensed version that you get on the television. It is again about choice - I read the news I am interested in, and not the stuff I’m not, and I can get far more information on it as well.
On this same issue, Mike Rouse has written an excellent guest post over at the Wardman Wire*:
The movement away from schedules towards a more on-demand style of television is part of our efforts to find yet more ways to save time in our increasingly busy lives. Spearheaded by Sky Plus, the rise in consumer demand is for TV “when you want it” - no more having to wait until 9pm for your favourite programme to start and no more having to set the VCR.
So even as the traditional TV is dying, a new more on-demand style is rising from the ashes. Internet TV stations, like 18 Doughty Street, are providing a 21st century solution to the end-of-TV dilemma. TV is dead, long live TV!
* I am also a guest poster there while Matt is away, but I’m current suffering blogger’s block on the posts I want to write! I’ll get there eventually…
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Now look, Chris, you’re getting as bad as me now. 14 posts on the Reader! Only Matt Wardman had equalled you.
So to TV. They stole mine eight years ago and I never rebought one.
The only thing I watch on TV now is ‘Heroes’, everything else is DVD or online.
(I could watch ‘Heroes’ online if I wanted to - but I think the cliffhangers and having to wait a whole week are adding to my enjoyment of the show)
I watched the first couple of episodes of heroes on TV - but I couldn’t wait for the rest so watched all the rest online!
By any chance, does he predict an end to the TV License?
Bloody hell, TD, I gave my TV away a year or so ago, and never regretted it. Then, earlier on tonight, popped round to yours, and the rest is history - 1973, to be exact…
>Now look, Chris, you’re getting as bad as me now. 14 posts on the Reader! Only Matt Wardman had equalled you.
Can’t have been me - I was on holiday.
Anyway - TD had written several of them.