On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 6:06 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16009155 > > An interesting article in which television is praised for flexibly adapting > to the challenges of new media - partly because most tv viewers are too > lazy, or too social, to take the Kevin M approach to patching together > their own free or cheaper network. > > "It helps that TV is an inherently lazy form of entertainment. The > much-repeated prediction that people will cancel their pay-TV subscriptions > and piece together an evening’s worth of entertainment from free broadcasts > and the internet “assumes that people are willing to work three times harder > to get the same thing”, observes Mike Fries of Liberty Global, a cable > giant. Laziness also mitigates the threat from piracy. Although many > programmes are no more than three or four mouse clicks away, that still > sounds too much like work for most of us. And television-watching is a more > sociable activity than it may appear. People like to watch programmes when > everybody else is watching them. Give them devices that allow them to record > and play back programmes easily, and they will still watch live TV at least > four-fifths of the time"
I had higher hopes for the article. He took a snapshot of where the TV business is right now and declared it healthy. He champions the pay TV model and proclaims it triumphant without a word of what that means to local programming - if local affiliates really disappear, is TV really healthy? I also take exception to his claim that cable/satellite is growing because 2 million more people signed up last year. Last year was an anomaly because of the digital switchover and the cable companies ran special deals to bring in people who preferred basic cable to a converter box or a new TV set. The biggest thing I take exception to is the lack of a demographic breakdown of results. It could be that the number of hours a day the average viewer watches has gone up, but is that across all age groups? If the over 60s are watching a lot more TV and the under 30s are watching much less, maybe the average number goes up a bit, but the trend is clear that the TV business is no longer healthy and it's just a matter of time for the symptoms to show. I agree to some extent with the lazyness issue as there is a huge proportion of people who keep the TV on as background noise or unwind in the recliner and channel surf until something comes on they want to watch. If that's your approach to TV, then the advantages of the internet are lost on you. Streaming TV is only for those who know beforehand which shows they want to watch. I don't buy the global notion that TV is healthy or has been able to adapt quicker than other media to the disruptions of recent years. When AOL started its unlimited plan and Netscape offered Navigator, newspapers were among the first to try to establish a web presence. They struggled for years to find a way to put out content without harming their print business and different newspapers tried different strategies. The decline still came. I think the TV business is also trying a number of different strategies and it remains to be seen if any of them can forestall a decline. Tom -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
