July 2011 I wrote about how we watch TV, the
title: I Don’t Have
a TV. I recently read Outside the Box, by Ken Auletta in
the New Yorker, an article I highly recommend and decided it was time to
revisit the topic for a bit.
We know that “TV” has changed. What has changed as well, is who means what
when they use the word “TV”. That’s what
my blog post from nearly three years ago was mostly about. This time around, I’m more interested in the programming
aspect of TV; that is content, not context.
Television today faces two major threats: advertising
models and streaming services.
About 50% of viewer households today use digital video
recorders and another half to two-thirds of those households skip the ads. That
is a huge shift away from media dollars spent on TV adds, although today still
40% of all media dollars are spent on TV commercials, more and more advertising
dollars are being shifted from TV commercials to digital media and that trend
will continue.
The second threat, streaming media goes to the core of TV
as we know it, as streaming services and devices are getting cheaper and easier
to use. The only thing the streaming
services can’t offer the life shows (so-called appointment viewing), such as
the Oscars, Olympic Games or American
Idol. Consequently the only TV shows
and networks not worried about the future are those involved in sports
programming. The future for traditional
TV lies in airing more live events and to attract higher advertising rates.
Without the interruption of advertising on streaming
video, viewing has become much more immersive. No wonder then, that the average
Netflix viewer watches 2.5 episodes in one sitting, no wonder that Netflix
thrives on complex, serialized shows with complicated storylines that would not
do so well in syndication. And, no
wonder that we are talking about the golden age of scripted drama.
Netflix of course just being one, if the most popular,
streaming service; there are many
others, such as Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Apple TV, Popcorn Flix, Google
Play and of course YouTube. And, in the world of YouTube, not only is every
device a television but every viewer is a potential network and content
provider.
On the long run the real problem will not necessarily be
traditional TV vs. streaming services, but who holds the key to broadband
connection and not only the last mile.
Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video and the other streaming-video
providers all require a broadband connection.
Cable providers might place a meter on subscribers’ Internet usage, like
power companies do. And even with fiber being the future for ultra-fast
connectivity, so far only a handful of cities are cabled and rural areas have
an even longer uphill battle. Google
launched Fiber, but so far they only have Kansas City and Provo, Utah wired – Austin
is next – it’s a looooong way to go.
After all of that, herewith a baffling statistic and not
baffling, because it’s high number of hours watched TV, but baffling because
these are the Nielsen numbers ONLY! So, Nielsen
ratings still suggest that of the forty-two (!!!) hours of television that
Americans watch each week, only three hours are on portable devices or
computers. Man, that’s 6 hour a day
AVERAGE (not including streaming services, just traditional TV)… - Imagine how
our GDP would go up if we didn’t have TV’s, or maybe it would just be the
birthrate going up…
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