May 20 2009
Television
I am not sure how many of you, our reader(s) still watch television using the old fashioned meathod of actually turning on the Tele, then switching to a channel, and sitting down to watching a show all the way through. I know that for the most part I don’t, and it now seems that the networks are not too happy about this. NBC, ABC, CBS, and I guess Fox have a point though. They try to build strong brands backed up by content and then supported by advertising revenue generated by airing commercials every few minutes. But now we don’t watch those annoying commercials, and on two different cable televisions systems I have watched new commercials overlay the ones broadcast by the network (Thank you Verizon and Cox). So now they aren’t getting paid.
On the other end of the spectrum this new world of television viewing has provided us, the consumers of content, with a plethora of new avenues by which to enjoy our favorite shows. We can watch them when they air, DVR them, watch them on our computer at sites like Hulu or the networks own site, buy the DVD/BlueRay of the entire season after it runs, watch the entire season on Netflix’s Instant watch service, buy or rent the episode or season on iTunes or Amazon and download it, and probably a half dozen other means both legal and illegal (Bit Torrent).
This now brings me to the point of my post. Kevin Wassong, a former television development executive who worked on Golden Girls has decided that this brave new world of television viewing, specifically Hulu, is a”…massive destruction of media value…”. His argument is that the real value of a network is not in the shows that they produce, but in their history and I love his words here: “The years that it has taken the network to train consumers to expect a level of quality that can’t be matched”. I am honestly unable to craft a short rebuttal without resorting to profanity. Has he not turned on his television in the last decade? Obviously he has, he talks about it, go read this for yourself if you like. The link is here.
Over the past several years I have been forced by the networks to have no expectations of anything other then more reality television that I can not stand. Every time ABC, NBC, CBS, and even Fox have aired a show that I am in the least bit interested in, they have then canceled it within the Season with only a few notable exceptions. These shows have then been replaced with content that I can only believe is aimed at the Lowest Common Denominator. Look at our current crop of winning shows like NBC’s The Biggest loser, Great American Road Trip and Celebrity Apprentice, ABC’s upcoming Reality Hit Wipeout and the Bachlorette. This season she gets to service 30 different guys in her search for fleeting fame, money, and I guess maybe some kind of non-physical Love.
Our good friends on Cable aren’t much better. MTV which was the channel we all wanted back in the 80’s and early 90’s, the one our parents hated, and which good little rebellious teenagers watched, has turned into nothing more then a playground for scripted reality and mainstream manufactured pop stardom. Can anyone out there explain to me how Paris Hilton needs a new BFF.
There is no longer any expectation of quality from any network except possibly Discovery, National Geographic, and maybe a few others. (Note: TLC “The Learning Channel” does not make that list. The only thing that you might, possibly, learn on that channel is that John and Kate now have 8 children and it isn’t easy to be a little person in a big world.) The only value left to any produce of content is in what they produce, and today they need to wake up and realize this. Nobody cares if the show runs on ABC, NBC, or PAX so long as they know which channel and what time to set the DVR for. And after this past season, you need a computer in order to figure that out
Services like Hulu are essential in the modern world. They drive viewers to shows and garner revenue with each viewer. Claiming they are destroying a value that no longer exists is asinine.
Stop fighting the consumer. Stop trying to block our access to content. If I choose to DVR a show and watch it next week, pause it while it is live to go get a soda, or watch it on Hulu, be thankful I am at least taking the time out of my day to sit down and view it. If I have paid the $2 per episode fee to purchase it, be even more thanful because that means I didn’t download the torrent.
I guess that is it.
3 Responses to “Television”
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OK, but if Netflix et al want to increase the number of on-line viewers, they need to enable viewers to use something other than Internet Explorer. Not everyone uses that particular program. Makes you wonder what kind of kick-back Netfilx and other might be getting from Microsoft.
Netflix lets you use IE on Windows and Firefox or Safari on the Mac. Hulu I have used in Firefox and Safari on Windows and Mac, and Firefox on Linux.
Netflix however has a number of other options. The deal with Microsoft actually goes a lot deeper. Silverlight is the Microsoft competitor to Flash and is what Netflix uses, they use this I and other believe because Microsoft put the Netflix client player client into every Xbox 360. That means the few tens of millions of Xbox 360 owners now can Netflix instant watch directly on their televisions without plugging anything new in. Netflix has also cut deals with makers of LCD televisions and Blueray player to build the clients into those, and I own this wonderful little device called a Roku player that is little bigger then a paperback and it plays back netflix on my TV. Simply enable wireless on it, plug it into the TV using one of the hookups, and it has all of them, browse through the que and hit play.
I happen to like TLC and john and kate plus 8. It is interesting to see how other people live, granted after awhile they subcomb to being reality tv stars, but at least it is real reality and not scripted reality trying to win a husband, or a new bff or whatever.