While we, internet users, are still getting used to watching “television” on our computers, I wonder how differently we will watch television in the near future. Initially, with the launch of iTunes Video Store, I suspected that advertisers would be the ones hit the hardest. If people pay for their television programs, at what appears to be reasonable prices, then the need for commercial television, as we know it, is dead. But people do not watch television programs on their computers the way they watch it in traditional television sets.
Even as we download new episodes of our favorite TV programs on iTunes, I suspect that DVD sales and rentals (including Netflix) are in even more threat. Why? Because of the way people watch television. There is something about “channel surfing” that I think is lost with downloadable programs. With downloadable programs there is a bit of time commitment required. I cannot watch an entire episode of Battlestar Galactica if I just want to relax for, say, 20 minutes. There is a time commitment that everyone makes when they watch serial programming, and most people like to watch a few episodes back to back, making the commitment even more drastic. Serial programming has become more like long movies that you can watch whenever you want; lives running parallel to ours. But what about channel surfing? Is this “art” completely lost? Will anyone miss it? Why did i quote art? Is channel surfing just another way of saying “inefficient entertainment retrieval”?
Google Video
A few weeks ago, when Google Video launched, I channel surfed. I saw some pretty funny, cute, scary, interesting things. Google Video, although a competitor of iTunes Video Store, takes a broader approach in its future vision of television. It offers both traditional programming, with coverage of sports and serial programming, such as CSI, but with an added bonus of “random stuff”. I believe that this “stuff” is the future of channel surfing. I spent 2 hours a few days ago looking through random things and ended with a BBC documentary on Nintendo. If I was waiting for someone and I didn’t want to commit an hour to Battlestar Galactica (or reading), I can visit video.google.com and possibly find something short and interesting.
Websites like YouTube, Current.tv, and Channel101 are giving an outlet to the little guys; the aspiring film maker, political activist, college student project, online daters etc. And the audience is waiting. People are going to these websites, being entertained,returning, and taking away time from channel surfing (which television advertisers probably do not like). Channel surfers now provide a large audience to the large amounts of content, and content producers can become relative successful doing this. The internet world seems to make the most unlikely things successful. For example, when I visited YouTube, a 14 year old girl, who awkwardly sits in front of a camera and talks about things her room, was the “most discussed” video in YouTube.
Video On Demand
Where does this put cable television, and Video on Demand? They provide the same “instant gratification” that downloading a program brings. Well, they have time, but VOD needs to change. The problem with VOD is that it is limited to television sets and we’re learning that people like watching television anywhere they go (with the help of their laptop). Slingmedia and Orb allow users to watch their television from their computer, live or recorded. Though, i’ve heard that these companies might run into legal problems, because they can’t legally rebroadcast or retransmit broadcast television with a licence. Even with potential legal problems, these companies are providing the transitional technology that cable companies will soon require to incorporate into VOD. Eventually, there is no reason why someone can’t start watching live television in their television set, pause the video and with their computer log in and resume watching the program where they left of.
Broadcasters as Pod-casters
Like cable companies, broadcast companies needs to to transition onto the web. This would require CBS, NBC, ABC to move their live programing to the web, possibly even with commercials, for anyone to get their local programing from a computer or a cable set box. IPTV is becoming more wide spread (with VOD), and large scale deployments of broadcast television in the web is just inevitable. It takes only one large network to move before all networks quickly follow.
In the late 90′s there was WebTV, a set that allowed users to browser the web and email with their television. That did not turn out so well because a television was far more limiting than a computer. Now, television are looking more like computers. The number channel system is outdated and URLs (or keywords) make more sense. cbs.tv, nbc.tv, abc.tv (or abc.nyc.tv for local editions) make more sense if we want to access our programming from any future technology.
The technology people retrieve might be different, but the behaviors we take to find content will likely not change for some time.