The Internet is the death of television
By George Gardner
A good friend of mine pointed out the other day that the minute you say “I remember when…” is the very same minute you’re considered to be old. However, there’s no denying the fact that I’m still relatively young and I do remember when the Internet and television were two separate things.
The year was 1993; I was sitting in front of my computer with a 9600 baud modem preciously waiting for images to appear. Pixel by pixel, from top to bottom, the image would take nearly 2 minutes to load. That was back when images were no larger than 640×480 and video was non-existent.
Today, cable, satellite, and terrestrial broadcasting closely mimic what people do and see on the Internet. The Internet has become television, and, in the process, television has quickly succumbed to the Internet.
Take for instance Google’s Hot Trends. It’s a listing of the current 100 top searched items. Quickly glancing over, you’ll notice roughly 85% of them pertain to a movie or television show that recently ended or an actor/actress that played a part on TV. In fact, the TV Guide could be used as a search almanac for queries on Google and could even be used to predict future top searches.
I’ve been studying this closely over the last few months, and, today, it’s like clockwork. Anyone who pays attention to something for a given period of time will start to learn about it and eventually become an expert. For example, If I were one to ‘game’ the system, I’d mention the upcoming movie Independence Day starring Will Smith on FX Networks. It airs in roughly 1 hour from the time of this post. If you were brought here by this search query, please drop a comment to prove my point.
But aside from all that, video streaming technology and Internet bandwidth are no longer limitations to adopting exclusive Internet TV. The only obstacle standing in the way of the death of TV is our current generation.
Take the cell phone for example; the majority of cell phone only households are from the younger generation (e.g. younger than 30). According to a federal survey conducted in late 2006, 10% of U.S. households were cell only, no landline, my house included.
But having the technology, even at a reasonable price, isn’t enough to change the world. It’s not so much that the older generation is ’stuck in their ways,’ but that they simply don’t know how to operate, we’ll call them, futuristic gadgets.
Given this, I would expect a flux of Internet only television watchers in the next 5-10 years, the same time that our younger generation starts to move out of mom and dad’s house.
However, It’s going to take a little more than just 5-10 years for this to happen; we’re going to need the quality content on the Internet that we have on TV.
And we’re not just talking about a quick fix of information. I don’t wake up to the television telling me how traffic is or what the weather is going to be like. The reason being, I can usually power up the computer and find out what I need to know before the TV gets around to broadcasting the information. There are no ‘weather on the 5’s’ or ‘traffic on the 8’s’ with the Internet.
News is even making a big hit on Internet TV; Google News has just started showing links to video content. Google News will now display links to online video news for such media outlets as CBS, Reuters, and a number of local Hearst TV stations. More will be added over the next few months.
The Internet needs good content, not just YouTube videos, news, and weather; but 2 hour long movies and 30 minute sitcoms.
Copyright issues also stand in the way. Most major broadcasting corporations simply don’t understand or don’t want to integrate their broadcasting into the Internet. The reason being because there is a smaller amount of money to be made on online advertising. Additionally, today’s computer makes ‘ripping’ videos from the Internet a cakewalk.
But the time will soon come when Internet TV, or IPTV, starts taking its share of the broadcasting market. When this happens, you will start to notice a hybrid broadcast of all television channels. Most, if not all, broadcasting channels will be not only accessible by cable/satellite/terrestrial, but also through the Internet.
It is only when this occurs, that our younger generation will not see the need to purchase cable and satellite TV, but will rely solely on the Internet to provide their media.
Major telecom providers in Europe and Asia have been the leaders in implementing IPTV, which is expected to become mainstream in only a few short years and replace standard cable subscriptions.
Adobe’s next version of Flash Player will be one of the major stepping stones in Internet TV adoption. The new Flash Player will support the H.264 codec.
For those not familiar with the H.264 codec, it is known as MPEG 10, and is a video standard that offers much greater compression than its predecessors while allowing for a better quality video. YouTube also supports the H.264 standard.
The technology is still advancing and the equipment is available; however, we’re going to need more support from our younger generation and our broadcasting companies before we can see the death of TV as we know it.
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Read more entries by George Gardner.
Stumble It!
September 12th, 2007
The internet is going severly damage the market for live event pay-per-view inside of 5 years, and it’s a certainty within 10. Check out any forum for wrestling, boxing or MMA around a major event and you’ll find plenty of people trying to find that sopcast stream. The same goes for more mainstream sports – if you’re willing to deal with the shitty quality you can get Sunday Ticket for free – but it’s not as critical there as they’re not based entirely around the PPV model. At the moment, this isn’t too signifigant because the only people who would be willing to put up with the hassle and degraded quality are cheapskates , poor people and technophiles, who aren’t the most desirable entertainment demographic. As things continue to improve, though, it’s going to become pretty hard to justify blowing $50 on a PPV or $200+ on a sports package when so many others are leeching at at least acceptable quality