Thursday, April 19, 2012

Gazing On A City Under Television Skies

Not a fan of television anymore. (Not the band.)

About the only show I enjoy these days is Craig Ferguson. The surprisingly witty, self-described 'creepy old Scottish dude' is one of my very few connections to the broadcast world, and only a handful of shows on the cable channels interest me. (Mostly shows like Gold Rush and American Pickers. I'm such a dork.)

I think television is over for a number of reasons. Firstly, I see a convergence of the TV device and the PC device, in the same way we've seen a convergence of the cell phone and the laptop computer. Secondly, there's more flexibility with an internet-based source for 'shows'-no need to schedule time to watch. TiVo and DVRs will delay recognition of this fact for some time, but eventually a service whereby all programming is on demand, ie the internet will render such devices obsolete.

Enough people watch stuff via internet piracy. The media companies aren't beating them anytime soon, as we learned in Prohibition and the heyday of phone phreaking. Try to bar people from something, and they'll find a way to get it. Why don't the media companies just use the internet?

No comments: