Its rerun season. For whatever reason - you know it has to be money - The major networks close out their prime time season in May and send us the reruns or the Class B shows for the summer. It used to be if you missed an episode (or even a series) you had to have recorded it or wait for the rerun. That's no longer the case. The networks own sites have full episodes of programs available for view (with commercials). There are also sites that allow you watch whole seasons of prime time content at your convenience. Hulu, and Joost let you pick which program you want to watch and then it comes up with reduced (but still there) commercials. NBC & ABC support Hulu and Joost has a selection of all network shows. There are live TV feeds on the Internet so if you have Internet, but no TV you can watch programs.
All this brought to mind where the future of TV is heading. We are so busy, that it is tough for us to commit to watching a program at the same time every week. The advent of the VCR broke that chain, but the actual implementation of taping shows wasn't so hot (who hasn't had to read the manual 3 times to make sure a VCR would record). Next came TIVO(DVR technology) - the Hard Drive that would record your programs automatically and keep them until you could watch them. Of course that technology was space limited and could screw up if a program came on late or lasted too long (think football games). After owning a DVR for a year, you find yourself constantly erasing old programs. It seems to me that keeping the programs on the web, where you could watch them and see the ads when you want is a better technology.
I see the networks not losing this valuable revenue stream and all will have "watch me later" options for all their prime time shows. They may even get smart and store old seasons of popular shows so that consumer can load the shows on the Internet and the networks can insert up to date ads. You know how popular DVDs of TV shows are. But who really wants to dust DVD cases? Its just better when someone else keeps the clutter!
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2 comments:
On line is the only way we watch 'tv' at the house and even then we end up sleeping through part of it!
Hmm. Have had TIVO since our European days. Love them. I can sometimes be a TV addict at nite. However ours has dual recording, set it to re-run or first run capabilites which eliminates re-runs episodes, pausing to get up is god's tv creation, and I can watch at my convenience in a much shorter time. Sometimes I just have to get away from the computer mode.
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