TV - A Changing Evironment

I’m sure that there are very few people who don't consider television to be one of the greatest inventions of our time. Ever since the first gray scale television signals were broadcasted at the beginning of the 20th century, television has undergone several technological changes but the principles of the medium have remained the same – until now that is. With the spread of broadband Internet connections and the adoption of new digital media technologies, television is facing it’s biggest change ever.

- Old principles

TV technology has evolved from black and white cathode ray tubes and very low resolution analog signals to full color plasma screens and digital high resolution imagery. Although the technology and picture quality has drastically improved over the decades, the principles of television programming and the revenue model behind it have essentially remained the same for over fifty years.

In my view the current model can no longer be justified because it has two major flaws that need to be addressed.

- Major flaw No 1 - Advertising

When you sit down in front of the television to watch your favorite show you still have to put up with commercials interrupting your experience. It’s not all bad though. The commercials give you updates on new products and services. Some ads are also quite entertaining to watch and could even be considered art if you manage to look passed their capitalist nature.

Unfortunately “good” ads are very rare and most of the time you are stuck with watching cheap ads about something that doesn’t even remotely interest you. Not to mention the accompanying annoyance due to the broken continuity of whatever you were watching. But even the lamest of ads could be tolerable if you didn’t have to watch them over and over and over and over... well, you get the point.

No matter how annoying commercials brakes may be for us, they are still the main source of revenue for free-to-air commercial television channels. There are also non-commercial public channels and pay-TV subscription based channels without the annoying ads but the content is different.

Statistics show that the amount of ads in television broadcasts in the USA have more than doubled since the 1960s. This translates to 10 hours of programming that usually contains about 3 hours of advertising. This is a very disturbing development and does not seem to be getting any better (Wiki source).

- Major flaw No 2 - Distribution

There is also the issue of content distribution which has been solely in the hands of broadcasters. You cannot watch what you want and when you want it. Broadcasting companies are in control of the channels and they decide the schedule for you.

The quality or choice of the content depends also on your location due to the distribution cycle. I’ll try to illustrate this with an example. Let’s say your a big fan of a popular Hollywood television series produced in Hollywood. The broadcaster who is associated with the production of the show usually has first hand rights for airing it. Once the show has aired, other broadcasters can also get their hands on it for a substantial amount of money. Sometimes the rights for a show are so high or the content is so specific that broadcasting is not feasible in countries with a small viewer base – like Estonia.

One might think that these flaws are inevitable because there’s no better alternative. But I would argue that there are workarounds and an ever increasing number of people are already using them.

- Record –> watch –> skip ad –> continue watching

There is a large selection of different personal video recorders (PVRs) on the market that can store television broadcasts on an internal hard drive for later viewing. This gives you the freedom to watch your favorite shows at the time most suitable for you, not the broadcasters. The best part of it is that you can just skip the ad breaks. Now I admit that this concept is not revolutionary – I mean, VCR’s have been in use for decades but they have never been so easy and comfortable to use. Thanks to digital technology PVRs like the TiVo have revolutionized the viewing experience. Electronic Program Guides make it easy to schedule recordings and thanks to the random access nature of hard drives you can skip to any part of a recorded show instantly.

But PVRs are still at the mercy of broadcasters and the content distribution mechanism because the content is coming via television channels. PVRs can give you almost ad-free content enjoyable at any given time but only AFTER it has been broadcast in your area.

- Taking even more control

This is where the Internet comes into play and takes control of the distribution network. Distributed peer-to-peer sharing technologies like bittorrent give you access to the biggest and most up-to-date media library on the face of the Earth. Once a show has aired anywhere in the world it’s almost immediately made available for download on the Internet by the torrent community – without the ads of course.

This means that you don’t have two wait for a year until the second season of Heroes is aired in your area even though it has already been shown in the USA. With a broadband Internet connection almost all television content is just a download away. You truly have the freedom to watch anything you want – old seasons of Miami Vice or new episodes of Galactica. Shows that you might never see broadcasted locally.

Digital media players and storage hubs like the TViX, MediaGate or Apple TV are also becoming more popular as they can store your media library locally and provide a simple interface for watching downloaded content directly from your TV without any need for a computer. Sort of like PVR’s but instead of recording the broadcasts yourself you can download them from the Internet.

- How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

I should of course emphasize the shaky legal and moral aspects of peer-to-peer sharing activities but I’m not going to go into details in this essay. I would just like to point out that even though media companies are putting enormous effort into stopping illegal file sharing on the Internet they have not made much progress. Even if they do manage to shut down one network another one soon takes it’s place.

Luckily there are some companies and media distributors who have realized that instead of fighting new technologies they should embracethem. During recent years more and more legal options for downloading television content have emerged. Just like it happened to the music business it’s happening to the movie and television business. The most prominent players in this market is Apple with the iTunes Store which has become the world's biggest on-line music and movie store (Wiki source).

- Conclusion

The television viewing public is starting to realize that they should have the freedom to watch what they want and when they want. Once you get a taste of the freedom of media consumption it’s highly unlikely that you will ever want to go back and lock yourself in the ad infested distribution chain of traditional television.

These developments could either be the natural evolutionary step for television or the beginning of it’s demise – I don’t know. But I am certain that the current revenue model for television broadcasters cannot sustain itself for long. Change is inevitable.

(image by Kevin Steele)