Future Bleak for Broadcast TV
ByI hate TV. Since moving to America I’ve hardly turned the damn thing on. For a start, I refuse to pay $60 a month for 100 channels of rubbish so I stick with 13 channels of rubbish, most of it (thankfully) in Spanish.
Secondly, I hate the idea of not being able to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. Now I know all of you with Sky Digital and TiVo will say “we can.” But so can I. It’s called a video store and there’s a huge one across the street stocked with everything from Blackadder to Batman Begins.
The only programs I miss are documentaries but I can get many of the best ones on DVD. Meanwhile, the most entertaining or controversial clips from TV have been appearing on the Internet for a long time now, from John Stewart’s Crossfire appearance to the Galloway v. Hitchens debate. And I can get all the news and analysis I want from print and online newspapers, weblogs, and radio stations broadcasting on the Internet like the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4, who provide free podcasts of their best shows.
It’s obvious, the future of broadcast TV looks bleak.
Former BBCer (now Yahoo!er) and popular blogger Tom Coates sums it all up in this excellent blog post:
My sense of the future is that the role of broadcast in the delivery of television and audio programming is going to significantly diminish over the next twenty years, and a more browsable subscribable media derived from the (fairly obvious) lessons of podcasting will replace it (with an individual either subscribing through a net interface or through a truncated remote-control based lean-back experience. And I suspect the people who are going to be maintaining the intermediary platforms for this kind of experience will be the big search, navigation and media sales companies – Amazon, AOL, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!.
Link
Does this mean that soon I will be able to watch complete rugby league matches wherever I am in the world? (Note to Americans: Please follow this link to a rugby league video demonstrating how to stop another human being without a helmet and pads!)
Links for today:
Stuck for a stocking filler? How about pants? Lots and lots of pants! I said lots and lots of pants! (Via Boingboing.)
Marcus at Harry’s Place reports that Rod is a liddle confused about the French riots (I recommend any American readers who think Islam is to blame for the troubles to read this).He also explores George Galloway’s new orifice. Yeurgh!
I’ll be at the Pajamas Media Open Source Media launch today. For streaming video of the event turn on your TV visit here.
8 Comments
November 16th, 2005 at 8:44 am
We don’t have cable for the very same reasons. When there is an occasional show we’re interested in, it’s never on during hours we’d watch. Thankfully, bittorrent and netflix satisfies our TV fix. One thing I really dislike about digital cable, it takes a second or two for the stations to tune in. Gone are the days of short attention span channel flipping.
November 16th, 2005 at 9:28 am
It’s not just the future of broadcast media like tv and radio that is on a limb. All static content, like DVDs and CDs, has the same bleak future. It makes sense that these media formats would fade to black, now that the technology is emerging for compressing content to the point that it can be accessed on demand. Digital TV is in a transitional state right now, and will eventually surpass video rental in convenience and affordability.
The notion of “renting” or “owning” content in analog or digital format is somewhat archaic. Audio and video is inherently etherial, it cannot be harnassed by the physical constraints of a puny disc. Despite the popularity of such current fads as purchasing and downloading music and video content for your iPod, this intermediate and clunky step must be succeeded by a subscription-based model, in which all content can be accessed all the time. Apple et al are just capitalizing on the immediate need to own content, because it is the only way right now. But it cannot last.
November 16th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Big Apple Blog Festival – October 10, 2005
Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week’s posts by NYC bloggers. Next week’s BABF will be hosted by Englishman in New York … if you have a NYC blog or you blog…
November 16th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
On what planet have you guys been on? People outside the lower 48, or outside the US period, have the opportunity to access movies and old programs through their supplier. As far as the news in concerned – do you really think that the print news doesn’t know their days are numbered? Today we make the choice what media we subscribe to, tomorrow our options will only become more numerous/more accessible/more confusing. Enjoy the days when you can still go and pick up a copy of the NY Times at your corner store and hold something physical in your hands because the papers know that the technological future is closing in.
November 17th, 2005 at 11:01 am
Ex post facto live memory blogging
I arrived late to yesterday’s Open Source Media launch, so I missed Jeff Goldstein’s keynote address (although Roger L. Simon filled me in). But I had a wonderful time yesterday. I have no idea what to expect from Open Source…
November 17th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
Hey there Slightly Bemused…
But do they have a range of choice as deep and wide as a video library with tens of thousands of titles? My experience of Sky and Cable in the UK is that choice, although decent, is still very limited.
Also, while I agree that print’s days are numbered, I believe the same big media companies are going to be around long after print is declared dead..but they’ll be online…and they may be bigger and better than ever…mainly thanks to blogging.
November 18th, 2005 at 5:39 am
League? LEAGUE?
Well, I suppose you are from north of Watford Gap, but do you have to broadcast this to the world?
Nice OJR piece BTW.
(From a Bathonian.)
November 18th, 2005 at 9:45 am
I’m afraid so, Tim. Although where I come from it’s UNION that’s the dirty word!
And thanks for the compliment on the piece!