Slashdot Mirror
You're Watching Less TV
NickFusion writes "With a plethora of online games, chat, IM, email and, well, Slashdot, who's got time to watch television? Evidently, not men ages 18-34. The NY Times (free reg, etc) takes a look at the issue and comes to conclusions that will shock, I say shock, the average Slashdot reader. Meanwhile, Fox Broadcasting Corp. is calling for a recount. Disclosure: I'm quoted in the NY Times article, and so is one Rob Malda. Mom will be so proud!"
It's cheaper than a TiVo and I get to keep stuff permanently. Also, I can enjoy The Sopranos and (before it was canceled..) Jeremiah without having to cough up $$$ for the expensive channels.
Well, lets see: with my research occupying upwards of 80-90 hours a week working, including some time posting on Slashdot :-), who has time for TV?
Seriously though, I mark my time online historically with the first major news announcement I heard online before I heard it via television. That news item was the Oklahoma city bombing of the Federal Building. Since then I have received most of my news items online rather than through traditional outlets. Even as a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, I get most of my content online.
Additionally, with the increasing productivity of the average American worker just trying to keep their jobs, one might suppose that the Internet provides for a more flexible media resource outlet allowing folks to customize their news searches without having to wait through the tripe and entertainment garbage that Fox News and more recently CNN et. al. have been delivering.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
We still watch good ol' broadcast TV every now and then, and we still have favorite shows, but we really don't watch much TV, simply because TV has been replaced by the Internet for instant-access news, information, and interactive entertainment. Cable just isn't worth it anymore.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
lets not forget that there is pecious little watchable programming on any channel, especially on the big networks...
oh yeah... did I get first post??? BOOYA!
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
This is a product of the fact that people want to be able to reclaim their time. That is to say, letting a box push information to them at it's own speed is a waste of time and doesn't give them exactly what they want.
TV isn't going anywhere though, as soon as the TV companies get off their collective butts and get more and more on-demand TV then viewers will return to that medium (even if it is through their computer/digital entertainment unit).
The days of people flipping through channels are ending, and the days of people flipping through menus of available media better be coming soon, or else they risk alienating a generation of people who don't have the time/desire to waste their life waiting for a show to start.
I don't know about the other guys in that age range - but who wants to watch all these reality shows? I had hard enough time keeping up with season 10 of a normal show, now theres season 5 of ppl doing weird stuff on tv.
Mod me down im a newf (wiki)
Quoting the penultimate paragraph:
Mr. Spector sees things a little differently. The missing men grew up with a joystick in hand, he said, and computer games have grown up with them.
No comment necessary.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Speaking from the middle of the 18-34 set (I'm 25) I can agree that most of us guys are watching a lot less boob tube. Partially because hardly anything worthwhile comes on (teen dramas and reality shows. And that's IT) the networks, and partially because a lot of us are pulling long hours at our jobs/universities trying to get our respective shit together, and when we get home, it's to watch the news or a freshly Tivo-ed basketball game or episode of the Sopranos. (Or Pr0n. Sweet, delicate pr0n). Then right off to sleep.
When I was in high school, I had much more free time to just veg out in front of the TV AND there seemed to be a better selection of things on (ST:TNG...BUFFY!). Cable networks are where it's at for decent entertainment.
Then of course the problem becomes the exorbitant rates cable companies want ($72.50/month for basic "digital" + HBO where I'm from. Fuck all that). But that's a rant for another time.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Wasn't it a Fox exec who commented that not watching the commercials was theft?
Obviously we must ban video games and the Internet because they are stealing potential revenue from the media companies!
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
until most of us just add a second monitor with a TV tuner just so we can surf and watch TV at the same time?
...can be found here.
Don't get me wrong, but I fit smack into that bracket and I don't get cable or sat. I just use my broadband connection to download all the shows I need.
Few bittorrent sites, supranova.org, torrentz.com, and an irc.irchighway.net network later and I've dropped completely off their "This group watches TV" radar, when the fact is I have over half a terabyte of TV.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
You'd think TiVo and other PVR's (Replay, Myth, Sage) would lead to increased TV viewing, but I would argue it keeps you from watching that piece of junk between two shows you actually care about. That gets you out of the habit of just mentally grazing TV and into the habit of active viewing
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Honestly as more and more TV shows make the transition to DVD, there's even less reason to watch TV, especially with the arsenal of inane reality-based shows bombarding the airwaves. I can play program director at home and put on the re-runs I want to watch rather than having some person who doesn't know me try to make programming that matches my tastes. TV is going to have to morph into something REALLY compelling for me to turn it on anymore, and once the Simpsons goes off the air, they'll have to work damn hard to get me to use a TV tuner again.
What software do you use to burn your svcd's and what settings do you use? I tried to burn one the other week with some software I bought by ULead and it won't play in my DVD player. There were tons of options for the format and all- I just don't relish trying them all out trying to find the right combination.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I'm turning 35 in a few months...does that mean I'll have to start watching more TV?
Give people TV programs worth watching if you want them to watch TV.
And the same will happen when a new medium appears.
Number of entertainment forms increase while number of hours per week stays the same, therefore average number of hours spent on the old medium per person decrease as number of hours spent on the new medium increase said Dr It'sFuckingObvious in a press release today.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Last time I moved I didn't either bother setting up my tv. For me the internet has allowed me access to more ebooks. Screw tv when I can read. 40 to 50 bucks a month to be able to watch crap is too much. Instead I toss that into an index fund and after these past two quarters I am glad I did.
Its more cost effective for me to not buy cable; which is about the cost of two uncapped DSL lines both with static IP's in my area. Instead, I buy the occasional DVD when I'm in the mood for a movie.
Another reason is that during the winter when you can actually go outside and not die of heat exhaustion I can sit on my patio with my laptop and wireless and use the net. If I want to watch TV then I'm stuck inside watching it inside.
I think the media companies are going to have to deal with this trend. As much as they would like to turn the Inter-web into a one-way communications medium like TV, its just not going to happen. Thats one of the big draws. I don't have to view your crappy commercials or just be a passive consumer of information.
If nothing else, the blogging fad is a big validator of the fact that people like to speak out in communications as much as absorb (well, most of us).
With the introduction of broadband internet and wireless networks to which you can connect from anywhere, we, as a society, have come to expect on-demand content. Television, with the exception of TiVo, does not fit into this new view of how we like to be entertained.
I have noticed that I have almost stopped watching TV altogether not neseccarily because I don't like what's on, but because I don't feel like planning my day around what I want to watch. Sometimes, when I happen to be doing nothing, I will watch the Daily Show, but even a show as funny as that isn't really worth planning my evening around it.
Article
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I'm in that age bracket, and I've been watching more TV than ever.
I sit at my coffee table with my laptop and a wireless card...the TV is almost always on.
FOX and all the other networks have ditch any show worth watching and replaced them with sitcoms and reality tv.
my tv is reduced to sundays(Andromeda, Enterprise, Alias) nothing else worth watching.
i'm considering reverting to comicbooks
TV just sucks anymore. When I do watch TV, it's usually old movies or stuff that was air maybe 6 months or more ago. Granted, with internet, work, games and such I don't have much time for it, but idf there was something good on I'd make the time.
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
I watch internet television.
What's a commercial?
I love these TV execs who are whining. "The numbers don't add up!" "How could they not be watching are ever-wonderful "Ass Crap Reality Show"? Everyone loves it!"
Give me a break. As a geek who doesn't even own a tv right now I don't miss watching TV at all. When we moved into our house I had to sell my TV (65in Sony HDTV - boo hoo) and the only reason I want a new TV is for three things: DVDs, XBox, PS2, all of which I have hooked up to old 20in computer monitors.
The message is clear, your shows suck, and while watching drama queens fight over getting to stay on the island might interest younger women, it does absolutely nothing for young men.
Casual Games/Downloads
Parent speaketh the truth! (Score: +5, insightful!)
Sorry Pal, I'm a lowly AC so I have less modpoints than a troll....
I used to plop down on the sofa at night afraid I'd "miss something", I would watch my favorite shows (simpsons,futurama,poker) and usually flip around while waiting for the next one.
Now that I have a TiVO (with dual tuner of course), I can look through all of the movies that will be on in the next three weeks and see if I want to watch any of them. I can tell if next week's poker game is one I have seen already, etc.
With sufficient planning, I can come home and play UT2004 or with the wife (no really!) all evening, without the nagging voice in the back of my head saying "there is media you want to be absorbing, and you're missing it!"
I suspect TiVO, by giving people the ability to plan and schedule their own viewing lets them cut out the crap they would usually sit through in the middle of the evening.
Mom does not need an endorsement of the fact that you've wasted your life to date on this interweb thingie. All she wants is grandchildren, Timothy. When are you going to deliver on that?
I am not watching less TV, but I am doing more things at the same time, I usually will work on my powerbook while watching the History channel, the only time I am not watching TV it seems is when I fire up the PS2, but if I am home the TV is most certainly on and I am at least watching it at a least some level. But since statistics tend to be driven by the extremes rather than the medians that get reported I would doubt this study or any statistical study is very accurate.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
I guess that's what happens when TV is flooded w/ pointless reality TV shows. Congrats, they appeal (mostly) to women and surprise!, a lot of men eventually stop watching TV. The only TV show I watch is Simpsons, and it is annoying as hell to hear all that american idol singing in the other room (girlfriend watches it) while I'm on the interweb.
Maybe it's just me, but, sure it can!
Why is it so hard to believe that intelligent males in the 18-24 demographic are just watching those programs that interest them? It seems to me that this is a sign of television's viewing audience rejecting most of the mindless drivel that they put on these days.
After all, it used to be fine for me (when I was about 5 years younger) to just mope around the house watching whatever was on. But these days, I'm busy with life, so I just make an effort to watch those shows that I like. I think that is the real issue here.
It really doesn't surprise me that the viewership has declined. All there is on TV nowadays is crappy Reality shows. 1 was great, 2 was okay. 15billion is annoying.
There are hardly any newer good quality shows. Most of the popular shows are started way-back anyway. Nothing new is worth watching.
I want my MTV! ( I personally can't stand it anymore . )
R.
Sure, most sitcoms are just rehashing old (or sometimes current) ideas, and here are other issues people have been bringing up why television will fail, but I think the real reason we are seeing a declins it that computer games and apps (like IM) offer interaction. You can't get that with TV. Its as simple as that.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
There was also a report by Harris Interactive, that while 84% of college students have TVs, 91% have PCs.
All the information I *want* is right there at my fingertips - not just the stuff the media wants to either shove down my throut or not give me enough information on.
Then there's the quality of the movies and other tv shows that are just poor. Very few channels have anything that's worth scheduling a night for - like 'The Shield,' 'CSI,' or something on the Discovery or History Channel.
Information wise, the Internet brings what I want, when I want and at what level I want 24/7/365(6).
I have no interest in watching boring gay men turn other men into women. I have no interest in watching angry minorities rail against the white man or show the white man that their differences are only skin deep. I miss the days of 'The Dukes of Hazzard' and 'CHiPs' where every action packed moment was car a chase and a crash. And strangely enough I hate NASCAR. There's really nothing on TV for me. Except for 'Arrested Development'. But Fox is probably hard at work looking for an excuse to cancel that one.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Big stations thought they had it right with reality TV but that certainly drove more women to the small screen but moved men away from it. Now we're playing more video games than ever and hating TV. At least there aren't ads in the middle of my game.
With the cost of cable going up and up and up, what's the use?
We live in an area where we don't receive the networks over the air. (NBC comes in, kind of.) Cable prices have risen to the point where it doesn't give value for the cost.
We have cable for the Internet access. Of course, about six months back, when we were trying to figure out a way to replace our ISDN (and didn't want to deal with the whole cable thing), we called our local telecom and begged them to tell us when they thought DSL might be available in our area. They said that they didn't know.
That's why it become available about two months later, right? *headdesk*
I'm working my way down the list of all the BBC shows. You're absolutely right. I could almost unplug the antenna at this point.
there's no place like ~
I fondly remember the day I discovered Farscape while in the middle of of season 3. I spent a month watching one or two episodes a day, living and breathing the stuff.
It's a truly heady experience and one I heartily recommend. Being able to pull down the entertainment you want, when you want it is going to change the way things work at a very basic level. Media executives should be scrambling to figure out how to switch to a subscription model before their ad dollars dry up.
Fraiser, Sex and the City and Friends have finished their run.
Mainstream shows go out with a bang and sci-fi gets axed. End result is still the same, there is nothing on too watch.
Just my $0.02.
oh thats right I am spos to be watchin all that stuff that some advertising blockhead says that males age 18-35 will like. Yup like the britney spears live special....yawn...i think i will frag some more ppl on BFV
Never underestimate the logical power of sarcasm
I waste a lot of time tinkering with my MythTV box (thank you Isaac and team!).
I spend so much time making my TV and video viewing time more productive that I don't have much time for actually watching TV.
As a side benefit when I do sit down to watch some boob tube it's on my terms (no advertisements) and on my schedule.
It could just be that there's absolutely nothing worth watching on TV anymore... Wonder if those TV Execs thought about that when they started ranting and raving.
Seriously, besides the Simpons and the odd episode of Alias, most all the programs that i run across are extremely predictable and dull (i should mention that malcolm in the middle and arrested development is often good as well). I dont care to see the sixteenth reincarnation of "lets put real people in a stressful situation and watch them break down" (real meaning hollywood real, wannabe actors and models).
Are there any DVRs (besides building your own) that don't require a subscription?
I'd seriously just like to use one like a VCR. I know the great thing about the service is the "predictive" recording, but I'd really just like to be able to record at a fixed time for a fixed duration. $300 for a Tivo isn't that bad until you add in the subscription, IMO.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Actually if we were reclaiming our time, and our lives, we'd tell the corporations to fuck off when we have to work 80hours a week.
Face it, folks. Television is 99% crap.
At least one-third of the daily broadcast schedule is infomercials. Most of the "cable" channels run only popular shows from other networks, or heavily edited movies over and over and over again, basically just to fill time.
Television advertising is grating, patronizing, lowest-denominator sludge which subtly insults as it offers suburban paradise with five-figure price tags to minimum-wage consumers, and interrupts the crappy programming eight times an hour to do so.
Sitcoms aren't funny. Dramas are political speeches. The local news is a carnival barker, and reality programming is nothing but a metaphor of a society fascinated by the misfortune of the powerless.
There hasn't been a meaningful sentence spoken on television in decades.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
What a pathetic group of people
Why watch news?
I've always thought: If something so important was happening, that i had to know about it _right_now_, then someone will have posted it on slashdot.
So I just come here instead.
Case in point:
WTC being hit - slashdot
US going to war - slashdot
Space Shuttle Columbia - slashdot
47 hours of live round the clock coverage of each of the above events (most of which is old news anyhow) - cnn
I don't get cnn for a reason.
I would much rather play Enemy Territory then watch some poor asian geek sing Ricky Martin!
She bangs, She bangs!
-asoap
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
You know, I gotta agree. I'm in that demographic range and I sure don't watch half the TV I used to. I attribute this to two things:
1)Reality TV
2)Scifi cancelled Farscape
"According to the Turtle" www.paperbackreader.com
Then he follows that up with:
"The audience is growing and growing, and growing..."
of network or cable tw.........sure.....
What crap, I can't understand people who spend more then two hours a week watching free TV let alone spending over $100 a month for the crap on cable.
Steve
like me have the tv set up where we can se it while on the computer.
With T.V. I can have tripe like "Yes Dear" forced upon me or I can view meaningful content on demand via the internet.
For example, I can pay $80/mo. for standard, no movie channel cable from Time Warner and get news fed to me in 30 minute bursts or I can pay $8.95/mo. for internet access and read in-depth studies from sites like foreign affairs. I can be a better parent and read about my gifted son's condition and learn from it on the internet or I can sit on my ass and watch Temptation Island.
T.V. no longer consistently delivers meaningful content (if it ever did). Heck even formerly great channels like TLC have relegated themselves to regurgitating reruns of While You Were Out.
The entire media industry is sooo out of touch with the populace and clearly have no clue how to react and change to an increasingly digital lifestyle so many of us are adopting.
hi,
can someone please post San's authorisation again?
i forgot his credentials and i am too lazy to figure it out myself.
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
remember when the writers threatened to go on strike? The studios should have done to them what Reagan did to the air traffic controllers. Fired em!! Maybe some new blood would have gotten into tv and movies instead of the constant remakes , rehashing of old tv shows, formula TV based on what some advertising weenie thinks we all want to see
Never underestimate the logical power of sarcasm
In Germany, the GEZ (Gebuehreneinzugszentrale) demands every household with TV and/or radio to contribute a monthly fee which is more expensive (about 16 Euros) than a cheap DSL connection. What is more, GEZ people are known for their sometimes nasty methods to acquire subscribers. So especially many students don't need a TV and put the money into more useful things like internet connectivity.
Are the television studios going to begin offering a variety of compelling content, or will the internet dumb down and homoginize to the point of utter worthlessness?
Having been on the net for 8 years; my money's on the latter, personally.
There are so many shows out now with flaming gay characters. I don't find them funny, nor do I have anything at all in common with them. Neither does the rest of middle america.
No wonder no one watches TV anymore, I sure don't. I got rid of my sat a year ago and don't miss it. I love the extra $80 a month I have to spend though.
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
What broadcasters need to do, IMO, is simply cut back on the costs of programming, then they wouldn't be whining and complaining that we're off doing something more useful (yes, at least playing games is more interactive).
The biggest problem I have with TV is commercials. Cut down the commercials, and I'd watch more. I realize that's how they make money, but it's beyond my ability to see as many commercials as there are for the precious little content I'm getting.
So: quit paying people Jennifer Anniston and Matt LeBlanc millions of dollars per episode, cut back on the commercials, and you'll get more viewers.
I'd even equate it with taxes: by lowering taxes the government is making more money per capita then it was before. Sure, revenues are still down, but not as much as the tax cut was. I'd say cutting commercials would not hurt television as much as it would immediately seem to - because more people would watch and they could charge more for commercials.
I suppose, then, they'd start getting greedy and we'd repeat the whole process all over again...
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I usually always have the tv on in the background -- I don't really set my eyes on it unless it's the Simpsons, or something actually worth watching.
How come no one mentioned Malcom in the Middle? T'is such a great show!
... we are seeing the very same trend! TV is down, Internet is up but so is also radio.
I guess the sheer stupidity of TV programs and the TV hosts in general (sure, there are exceptions) have finally taken its toll in the TV business. Personally I hate having my intelligence insulted (mmm, make sure there are no typos there now...) and so do many others.
The trend started a few years ago, as trends are want to. Prior to a media conference there was a poll where people were asked if given the chioce of dumping either the TV or the PC, what would they chose? The majority would dump the TV.
The reason that we watch less TV is that because there is less interesting stuff for us to watch as the channels are filled up with meaningless and boring reality TV shows. What the hell do I care if the loser from Average Joe hooks up with a hot chick? It's boring! Even the so called "Man Show" sucks. So does "Spike TV". We're not completely mindless.
I imagine that a few channels' ratings have actually gone up (like Discovery channel, Comedy Central and HBO), but as a whole, the major networks are lame and boring, and definitely not providing us shows that we actually care to watch.
Actually, I hope they continue to do it it...TV's expensive anyway. Plus, it's healthier to get off your couch and go do something outside.
But, considering I work and go to school, thats about all I have time for... and I really shouldn't even have time for *that*.
That's enough to explain it. Simple price competition. High-speed Internet penetration is growing rapidly and is expected to pass cable TV in about two years. Cable has been stuck at 66% for years, while broadband is already somewhere in the 45% range.
Not having cable TV, I had no idea people were paying $79 a month for a basic tier of channels. I thought it was still around $18.
Having cancelled cable more than a year ago, I find I still miss a few tv shows: CSI, Sopranos, [don't hate me] Survivor, etc. I've bought all the Soprano DVDs, and will probably buy the CSI DVDs as well, but what I really want is a way to download these shows for a small fee ($1?) and watch them add-free.
Right now, I download them for free.
I won't ever go back to watching TV, but the networks can get some money out of me by offering a show online.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
So called "Reality" shows are the *most* unreal thing on TV.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Jefe: We have stuffed many pinatas for your birthday celebration!
El Guapo: How many pinatas?
Jefe: Many pinatas, many!
El Guapo: Jefe, would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?
Jefe: Yes, El Guapo. You have a plethora.
El Guapo: Jefe, what is a plethora?
All you need is a package with the various Discovery, History, TLC and sports channels for $20 a month. It would sell like crazy. Beyond these types of tv, men in that age bracket like myself just don't see the appeal. Here's a thought for you tv people that might be reading this. Stop bashing men and stereotyping them and men might might be more inclined to watch. If portraying Blacks, Women, Arabs and so on stereotypically is unnacceptable, why should portraying men that way be acceptable?
Of particular disdain is that in order to have the programming loud enough to hear, the commercials are so loud they hurt your ears. Or you can have the commercials at the right volume and strain to hear the programming, if at all. Pop ups killed themselves when they were abused, and thats what tv does with commercials that are significantly louder than the programming. Whatever happened to sound leveling technology?
On Tatooine, on Rori, or on Corellia even ! I have been to all the planets and have not seen one TV. Sure a few of the cantina's have sports themes, but even they don't have a TV. Can't even get a droid engineer to make me one. That is on the Gorath server but I'm sure it is the same on all of them. No wonder ratings are in the toilet !!!
I'm 30 and I junked my TV at my last apartment in 1998. I think the weirdest thing is trying to watch tv when I'm visiting other people or sitting in a waiting room. It's the same thing as not eating sugar for months/years then eating something like a cookie and thinking: what the hell is this revolting shit that I used to consume by the bagload?
I don't really understand the emotional backlash from tv-viewers who think the non-tv people have a superiority complex but I suspect it's similar reaction with smokers vs non-smokers, fatties vs exercisers, SUV-drivers vs non-SUV-drivers and all the other great emotion-laden topics of this world that require masses of cognitive dissonance to justify expensive and unhealthy weirdness to calm an overy-anxious soul: excessive spending, tv-watching, eating, smoking, drinking just to calm down and forget about "the crappy universe" that's out to get you.
For the record, I used to be most of these things which probably makes me even more annoying than an ex-smoker. All that stuff you don't have time for (preparing food, exercising outdoors, enjoying nature, sex, talking, reading, thinking) you now have time for.
As for the trollers who say reading Slashdot takes up time... hm. Yes, about 20 minutes to read newspapers and slashdot online and make a comment. Not exactly in the same realm as tv-watching.
Talking to people whose lives revolve around work and tv is like talking to a Pepsi vending machine.
Everyone goes to the most popular sites
With insight like that online, who needs television?
Next they'll tell us that nobody visits the least popular sites.
shouldnt that headline be "Your Watching Less TV"?
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
...only in the sense that my gamecube or dvd player is connected to it. Otherwise it is useless to me. Broadcast and cable TV sucks.
My girlfriend watches it though. American Idol...*retch*
BayWatch knew what men in the 18-34 age group wanted... big breasted women running down the beach in skimpy swimsuits.
Plotlines? Well, if you insist, but they aren't central to the show. Try and limit it to stuff like: "Pam gets injured while undergoing a bikini wax. Other cast members lend support."
Chip H.
Get ready for more tits and ass on the tv.. try to get us guys back!!! Over-reacting to Janet's boob isn't helping.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
March 29, 2004
Leisure Pursuits of Today's Young Man
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Note to the television networks: Pete Brandel is not missing. He's right here, but like a lot of other 20-something men he's just not watching as much TV.
Mr. Brandel, a 24-year-old real estate agent in Chicago, says that these days he looks to the Internet for news and entertainment. Television, he says, is bogged down by commercials and teasers that waste his time.
"I'll go to the Comedy Central Web site and download David Chappelle clips rather than wait to see them on TV," he said.
The television industry was shaken last October when the ratings from Nielsen Media Research showed that a huge part of a highly prized slice of the American population was watching less television. As the fall TV season began, viewership among men from 18 to 34 fell 12 percent compared with the year before, Nielsen reported. And for the youngest group of adult men, those 18 to 24, the decline was a steeper 20 percent.
In a world where fortunes are made and lost over the evanescent jitterings of fractions of audience share, the Nielsen announcement was the equivalent of a nuclear strike, a smallpox outbreak and a bad hair day all rolled into one.
But those who track the uses of technology say that the underlying shift in viewership made perfect sense. The so-called missing men might be more aptly called the missing guys, and they are doing what guys do: playing games, obsessing over sports and girls, and hanging out with buddies - often online.
And the evidence is accumulating that the behavior of guys like Mr. Brandel is changing faster than once thought. The rapid expansion of high-speed Internet access lets the computer become the video jukebox that Mr. Brandel uses to watch comedy clips. The seemingly inexhaustible appetite for computer games, DVD players, music and video file-sharing - and, yes, online pornography - all contribute to the trend, these experts say. While no one activity is enough to account for the drop that Nielsen reported, all of them together create a vast cloud of diversion that has drawn men inexorably away from television.
A spokesman for Nielsen Media Research cautioned against reading too profound a societal shift into the ratings slide. Jack Loftus, the vice president for communications, took a gentle view of the ratings data, saying that the total loss of average viewership, spread out across the entire population of men 18 to 34, translated to a reduction of "about four-and-a-half minutes" a person each night, which he characterized as "a bathroom break." The amount of viewing time lost, he said, has not narrowed since October.
That is understandable, experts say, given that nearly 75 percent of males 18 to 34 have Internet access, according to the latest figures from comScore Media Metrix, making them the most wired segment of the population. By comparison, 57 percent of men from 35 to 44 are online, comScore found in research for the Online Publishers Association, which is releasing the results today.
Between the allure of high-speed Internet services, computer games and other activities, "you begin to have the ability to get entertained and distracted in a million ways, and not just television," said Rishad Tobaccowala, an executive with the Starcom MediaVest Group, a company that advises advertisers on where to put their money.
Incompatible survey methods make it impossible to say that a rise in one kind of activity corresponds precisely to a drop in another. But study after study show that those in the age range of the "missing guys'' are devoting much more of their time and attention to interactions that take them away from passive activities like watching sit-coms and even popular reality TV shows like "The Apprentice" and "American Idol.''
David F. Poltrack, executive vice president for research at CBS, says that the trend of young men watching somewhat less television is clear, but that the Nielsen numbers still do not add up. The
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Don't get me wrong, but you have to wait a day or two for the SVCD's to come around. Getting the XVids a few hours later is a much better option. Sure you can't just burn it to cd and watch it in your dvd player, but you get better quality watching it on the computer.
Assuming your DVD player even plays them. When they don't its very annoying.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
I mean, it is really really bad. All this reality crap? Shite game shows. Shite guest shows. Shite soap operas. My god they've found a lot of utter shite to spew out over hundreds of channels 24/7.
Tivo rocks though cos it finds the gems in the manure pile.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I don't watch TV because one Super Bowl per year is not enough. I need more than one nipple a year.
I want more Sex, more uncensored movies, less comercials, less politicans, less church, less music on TV.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I have a laptop that sits on my armrest on my couch in front of the TV, and yes I am getting fat.
-NTidd
I think the future is in paying per episode. Think about it - what if you could buy an episode of a show at a REASONABLE price, say $0.50. You could watch it when you wanted. Maybe they include the commercials, and you have to manually skip them. Big deal. Technical aspects aside (I am guessing TiVO like devices) imagine what this would do to TV as we know it. There wouldn't be any scheduling wars for the networks. They wouldn't have to plan out when a show is aired, or change up the schedules, or see who they are up against. No more "Must See TV", no more "LOL Sunday" (ugh). They could still release the shows on a certain time schedule, but you could watch it when you wanted. Of course, I suppose they could still have their schedules, and just release the shows for purchase the next day, so they could still cash in on those who don't have the TiVO like devices, or who want to watch it when it airs (like SNL).
Of course, the networks would never ever do this, because 1) it is a good idea for the customer and 2) they have to change the way they do business. Instead, they will just hang on for dear life to the (soon to be) outdated business model they have gotten fat on. Are you listening RIAA?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Too bad the article does not talk about any youths reading books now-a-days. Is this really true. Are video games and porn really taking over their lives that much?
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. I'm not in their "target demographic", being almost x'34' in age but Sturgeon's Law is the reason I watch less TV than I used to. (You can look up Theodore Sturgeon's science fiction for yourself) Also - in regards to a previous poster. Do Slashdot readers think that if VCDs of shows were sold, people would buy them to avoid commercials?
Sounds like the telco industry's rejection of the WAP usability study they comissioned from Jacob Neilson. When the answer was basically they the WAP design was flawed and nobody would use it, they just couldn't accept the bad news. So they rejected the study, and instead hired a bunch of "yes men" to give them the reassuring answers they wanted to hear. But ultimately WAP was doomed, and a biased study saying it wasn't only prolonged the denial.
As someone who stopped watching TV years ago, it brings a bit of a smile to my face to see Fox in similar denial. Maybe they'll surround themselves with "yes men". Then again, maybe they're actually smart and this second study is an honest attempt to get at the truth. But after not watching zero TV for a few years, and less than 1 hour each week for many years before that, it's really amazing to see how wrapped up a lot of people get in such compelling but utterly worthless little staged dramas.
Then again, the same thing could be said of posting to slashdot, I suppose....
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I'm right in the middle of that age range, and I don't watch TV. I get cable with around 100 channels, but I don't really use it. Not because I've substituted for it with the internet, or because I download and burn DVDs, but because TV is a one way communications medium with, for the most part, content my grandfather would call "rubbish". I'd rather be doing something creative or thought provoking than rot in front of the TV. If I spend a couple of hours in front of a TV, I wonder "is this all my life is worth?"
Just think about it as part of the cost of the box. The "build your own" numpties will have you spending hundreds more of your money and weeks of your time fiddling to get something which still doesn't do what tivo does within 10 minutes of plugging it in.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Reality Television
I currently have no TV at my home and I have no plans to buy one. Just watch DVDs or movies from well known sources on the computer. News on the internet, or even on the local radio station.
:).
:)
The best of all: you discover that you actually don't need electronic entertainment. Nothing is as good as chatting, discussing and talking, after a day of work. Not through the internet, of course (unless you live alone
It seems that people forgot to talk to each other, after TV was invented. At least people "interact" more with each other when using the computer to have entertainment, today. But IMO, it will never be as good as eye-to-eye talking and chatting, at dinner, with friend/family/partner/whatever.
What's a TV?
Isn't that a device to make zombies out of people?
Mainly because of f$cking DULL brainwashing "cozy" one-sided news, and the lack of good documentaries that really gives you an insight.
Not to forget those really lame soapeoperas, i want them to disappear from the TV screen, for ever!!
TV has become to "girly" for me, i'm turning on my shortwave radio instead, listening to BBC and other newsmedia.
I have a TV, but it's never on.
I hear that Alistair Cooke has passed away, on the radio on the way in to work and I can do a search through Google News and get a bit more information from choosing a source or two. I couldn't do this with TV, maybe someday we will, eh? TV films things and you get to pick and choose what you want to watch, they show you a commercial at the end of the clip or you simply pay to see it, ala carte. Content on Demand.
I left the TV for my video games and surfing over a decade ago. Too many other things to do or learn about than have my brain turned to mush with sitcoms or Oprah.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...I'd watch more. Family Guy, Firefly, even Seven Days; all shows that I loved watching that got nixed at various points before their time. They kill a good show, and 4 reality shows arise in its place. Its the nastiest hydra the industry has come up with in a long time.
As it is now, I've got FG on dvd, I've recorded every ep of Seven Days, I've seen every ep. of ST:TNG multiple times, and I'll be getting the Firefly dvds as soon as monetary situation allows. So why should I keep watching TV? Enterprise is utter crap. Reality TV is of course abysmal and should just go away entirely. And I've never liked a sitcom really. They all annoy me. The really creative/funny shows are marginalized and replaced to pander to the demographics, and when the demographics dont like whats being pandered to them, the producers just don't understand why...
Its the same reason I don't even bother going to the movie theatre anymore. Went to see LotR, and thats the last movie I see myself paying for in theatres for a long time. Even Pixar's newest offerings will probably be relegated to 'wait for dvd' status. I'd rather spend $15 on a dvd than go see a movie in theatres, as its not much more pricewise and I can then view multiple times. And since 90% of my favorite tv shows are either on DVD now, or coming to DVD soon, why should I keep watching it live with commercials?
Sorry, wandered around a bit there, but just felt like ranting some.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
Next thing you'll see is having to watch commercials before joining online games. These people never give up!
I'm not sure exactly when it started, but sometime between high school and post-college I lost the desire to simply sit and watch something. (I guess I don't really count towards this demographic, being a 22 yr-old woman, but I tend to follow the trends of the young adult male most of the time anyway.) I remember being home on summer break and having my father complain that I was spending too much time on the computer. Yet he would say nothing if I found a warm spot on the couch and watched TV for 12 hours on end. I'd sit there saying to myself, "I can feel my brain liquifying and draining out of my ears. Why on earth does Dad think this is a better pasttime than playing a video game where I actually have to (god forbid) think?" Even if the computer's broken or occupied or otherwise unusable I find that I can't simply sit and watch TV anymore. I have to be doing something else, whether it's doodling, reading, or doing some sort of craft activity. Folks my age who grew up with computers and interactive stories just get BORED with passive activities. You'd think the parents would be happy at this trend away from mind-numbing television and back towards a creative and brain-exercising medium like books used to be, but most of them (my father included) seem to be afraid of this new trend, whether it's because they think their children are going to grow up as little psychopaths from too much violence or they fear carpal tunnel syndrome. And god forbid the move away from television encourages the creation of new and more interactive media coming from the boob tube. The future's here, and it has a keyboard. Deal with it.
Reading the parent made me wonder if a lot of mod's had the wool pulled over their eyes... Sounds like trolling to me. But, since it's +4 interesting... I'll feed. Who do you think pays for those high quality Soprano's productions? The suckers who don't have broadband + a burner? What happens when they dry up, no one subscribes to HBO, and we all want our entertainment for free? Guess what... no Sopranos. Yes, the entertainment industry needs to grok the net and it's capabilities / appeals. But don't kid yourself - as a pirate, you are violating copyright laws and contributing to the decline of quility programming on TV. Less cash from the customers = less output, plain and simple (Enron economics aside).
I am in the top of the aforementioned age bracket. I do not have, and have not had for a long time, any interest whatsoever in watching TV. In fact, I can remember the last show I watched religiously and looked forward to watching... It was Star Blazers.
Since then I have had no interest in TV. Sorry guys.
If any big media people are out there, take this as indication of a new opportunity for revenue. I too am a 18-34 year old and don't watch TV. I don't have time on weekdays to do that, and given the small amount I would watch, cable just isn't worth it. Furthermore I am not such a fan of most of these shows that I would buy the DVD. Lastly while finding episodes to download can be inconvienient, not to mention illegal, it is the best option right now (but just to clarify, I don't - I have good reason to stay clean right now).
What do I want? I want to drive down to the video store and rent these. I heard "24" was good, I wouldn't mind renting the first season over a couple weekends. I never got to see Dr Who as a kid - I would love to rent those. I have seen a few series in the rentals (like south park) but not that many. Of course blockbuster only has so much floor space, and can only have so many DVD's, so why don't they have one megawarehouse per city that is full of all sorts of hard to find movies and episodes. Advertise it in the normal outlets and work it like inter-library loan.
Of course, another solution would be a legit download service, but since there is no way to inforce the rental concept, it would be purchase only if they were willing to do it at all, and at that price point it wouldn't earn my business. So mega-rentals.
Here is a link to the Onion article mentioned in the NY Times article.
Perhaps I'm just a cynical bastard, but most television shows on the major networks are pretty much complete crap. I'll catch the occasional Seinfeld/Simpsons re-run and only actually follow a handful of shows (Sopranos, South Park, Chapelle's Show, and 24), but these networks don't have any sense of what's good and what's not. Nor do they care. It's all about $$ instead of quality entertainment.
A good example is this Reality TV junk. For some reason, people enjoyed Survivor. At that point, I came to a realization that everyone is stupid. The whole Reality TV (aka unscripted tv) caught on like wildfire after that. Now we have shit like American Idol, Average Joe, Tempation Island, and all that other junk. It's old. It was never REALITY tv.
Stick 10 people on an island, leave them for a month or two, then come back and give the survivors 1 million dollars. THAT would be some good reality tv. Then we'd be betting on who gets killed/eaten next.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
they pulled angel, the simpsons are getting horribly boring, they aren't making any new Family Guy...and the semi-decoded porn channels dont seem to be semi-decoded anymore, no wonder
Who cares about TV? It's all crap. Really.
Look at the shows that are on now (my own titles):
Celebrity Cockroach Challenge
American Earache
Star Trek: Cancellation
Joe Commercials
Hell, even the History and discovery channels seem to be sinking to new lows. Monster House? Oh, come on now. And I just love the Hitler Reruns. The Criminal Case shows taped 1999, are the worst.
Why would I watch this stuff with my precious free time when I could instead use that time to read a book, or learn something. Or just go outside with a drink, and look at the stars for a while. Or play with my daughter.
TV, I find is loud, annoying, in my face, insults my intelligence, and is ALWAYS trying to sell me something. It's old. Real old.
wbs.
Huh?
is as someone reading you a bedtime story is to reading a book.
It not just that you don't control the flow when you're watching the tube, it's that you're getting someone reading you the news, which is about 10 times slower than reading it yourself.
Aggregate it, sort it, read it, goodbye.
Plus, as many here know, sometimes it is more interesting to read the reactions to a news story than it is to RTFA.
What were you expecting?
....This article makes me want to watch TV
Hey, the producers and networks are really at fault here. I don't care for reality shows, and what's the current big fad? It doesn't interest me, so I'll find something better to do with my time. If Final Fantasy XI is more fun than keeping up with Idol and the other sludge on my TV screen then so be it. TV might get more of my time if it wasn't so boring or just outright stupid as heck these days.
For now, Stargate, reruns of Family Guy and Futurama on Cartoon Network, Simpsons, and the occasional episode I get to see of Smallville is about all I care to spend time with my TV anymore. Other than that it's just background noise or torturing the channel up button for a couple hours.
and haven't missed it a bit. I am 30 now so from 25-30 no TV.
As other posters have mentioned, I will download or rent the items I am interested in on my schedule, not the networks, avoid the damn commercials (their only revenue stream), and often save it for future viewing.
As for information (news, research, reference), well, I had no idea broadcasters deluded themselves into thinking they had any market share of delivering anything other then entertainment. In either case their lies and delusions are worthless for my information needs and always have been. The Net just makes things easier.
One thing I expect to come of this ratings shift (along with the associated revenue shift) is more embedded plugs. I know about this because my girlfriend is in the audio recording industry which does most of its work in advertisement. But what is happening is products are paying top dollar for face time inside shows. They will have to shift to this type of revenue model as we all start finding ways to skip the captive audience ads. The other is online advertising is booming (mentioned here a while back) and may supplant pr0n as the new technology test-bed as they start dumping money into it.
So as we stop viewing the TV ads we will start getting more inside the shows and movies we watch and see more online.
I could easily download the vcds/svcds of all of the programs I love, but the one reason I still have cable is for sporting events. I don't want to watch my hockey team play the 3 or 4 times a year network TV decides to air it (on like a Sunday afternoon, when I have better things to do). I just have to face the fact that if I want to watch any regular sporting events (besides pro football), I need to get espn, espn2, foxsports, etc. I know I can get a lot of content over the web, but audio broadcasts and crappy streaming video doesn't quite do it for me.
I just moved into a new house two months ago. I did not bring a TV with me, thus I didn't subscribe to cable. I did get my hi-speed internet through cable, however.
I didn't miss it. I still don't. I just got a TV last weekend (borrowed from my future in-laws) and a DVD player. I figure I'll just watch movies when I want to - once a week tops. But I still am not bothering with cable (or even broadcast). Most shows suck.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
What's the standard /. user account + password for the NYT? it looks like they disabled slashdot124?
thank you
I wonder if they regarded playing TV in the background as well. I've normally got a little screen of a PCI TV-tuner running in the corner. Sometimes with sound, sometimes without (when I am listening to a shoutcast station).
It happens quite regularly that I find out that I am in the middle of one of those commercial representations that endure about 20 minutes when TV is finished. You can imagine how instense I am looking at the TV at that moment. So the numbers mentioned might even be an overstatement.
Ok, I am off, I am going to enjoy the simp^h^h^h^hunreal tournament. D'oh!
the only things I watch on a regular basis are sports, specifically NCAA Basketball & Football and the NFL. there may be a smattering of other shows I might catch, but otherwise I couldnt care less
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Not that I think this is a bad strategy. I'm ripping and distributing 7th Heaven in an attempt to get it off the air. So far, no luck. No downloads either. I think the ideal TV audience is the techno-illiterate.
The Boob tube indeed.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
Thanks to the Internet - a medium where anyone can publish anything, people are learning more about what really interests them, and are less likely to be interested in the pre-packaged entertainment that is television.
Unlike television, where only the shows that get the go-ahead to be produced are broadcast. The broadcasting companies are usualy only interested in producing something based on something else with a proven track-record and are less likely to innovate. They try to make it to appeal to as many viewers as possible. Whereas web-pages are just made by someone wanting to share their own brand of 'entertainment' with like-minded people.
In other words, the Internet is helping people break out of the tyranny of popular culture being shoved down our throats by the TV. Once people have tasted this freedom to like what they want to like, they are less likely to go back to the TV.
Why do you fucking submit NYTimes stories? Are you completely fucking stupid, or what? Do you think people want to fucking register to read these goddamn articles? Cocksucker. The least you could do is add the google workaround.
Will someone PLEASE fucking tell me why these asshole story submitters continue to link to NYTimes.
Years ago.. when CDs came out.. I loved the fact I could listen to music and skip to tracks I like quickly.. couldn't do that with tapes. We had the VCR which allowed me to access tv programs when I wanted to as well. Some call this time-shifting.. and some call it stealing because you don't see the commercials.
Why I stopped watching:
1) I lost the ability to have what I wanted at a reasonable cost and reasonable fair use.
2) Companies did not give me the choice to subscribe to the channels I wanted... so I saw that my value per dollar go down steadily through time.
3) Companies are running a relatively unviable business - it's dependant on selling advertising (or so they say).
I thought that if I paid for my shows.. I was paying for my shows... apparently the shows require a subsidy. So.. this whole industry requires subsidies from secondary industry. Does this not strike you as a precarious position? What hubris to think that your programming would continually survive without innovation.
My point is.. much like other traditional media industries in the United States, they are dependant on old systems and politics which give them money to keep them in business.
If something better comes along.. guess what.. people want it. They will do everything in their power and means to grab it.. to hold it.. to cherish it.
Don't spank them for wanting what they want. Offer them the choice... the new innovation.. the options and they will spend their time and their money.
To do otherwise is to insult your customers. Guess that's already happened... the customers are more saavy these days.. and they speak with their time and their money... they choose alternatives because someone else has figured out how to grab their attention.
So I vote with my wallet and support what I like... I don't like having to pay for channels I don't need. I don't like having to buy 18 songs when I only want 3. I guess I won't waste my time or my money on something I don't want.
I guess that those industries will suffer under their own weight because they can't support themselves due to a flawed business model.
I guess I'll go read my news and mail from the Internet... or maybe I'll stop buying fast food and start working out.. maybe I'll start being healthy again. Hmmm?
What will YOU do?
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
When I move into my new apartment next month I will not be transfering my cable service. I have decided that $50 a month for television that is 70% commercials just isn't worth it. The quality of programming is also not very good and most channels seem to be content with showing the same reruns over and over (After seeing the same documentary on the Spartans 10 times over the past 2 years on the History Channel, I doubt I can get any more information out of it.). Out of the nearly 70 channels I get in my basic cable package I only watch 6 on a regular basis. I can get all the news I need from the internet and to be honest, that is where most news channels get their stories nowadays anyway (how many times have you heard "According to the Drudge Report..."?). Plus, Enterprise and the Gilmore Girls are on broadcast TV and they are really the only two shows I am interested in anyway.
Smeghead every day of the week.
don't forget news.google.com for the latest on martha stewart!
-dk
I hardly ever watch anything on TV that isn't The History/Discovery Channel, unless it is Seinfeld, which I try to catch (twice) daily and 4 times on Wednesday! :)
BTW... The Sopranos BLOW. The whole premise of the show... where somehow, this cold, ruthless, sick bastard Tony somehow has become some kind of pop 'hero' to the gazillions of people who watch it is pretty sickening. Somehow it seems to equate to 'the bad guy wins, and this is good...', and that's not good no matter how you slice it.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
There's a reason why I watch less and less TV; because there's less and less worth watching. If it isn't repeats, it's new comedy series that are just embarassingly bad to watch. As the number of channels increases, the number of filler programs have to include increases, and these are just crap.
Sorry, but I'm not registering to read a simple news story.
Here
I find that my TV watching time has decreased in direct proportion to my toddler's facination with Dora the Explorer and Blues Clues DVDs.
For some reason, the Sopranos did not grab me. Watched the first episode. Have not seen another. Will probably buy it on DVD in a year or so.
The commercials drive me nuts, as does scheduling my time around when the show comes on. During the week, my evening does not wind down till 10 pm or so. I come home, play with my daugher (21 months), eat dinner, do other necessary stuff. By 10, I spend my time studying some continuing education courses. Play some Railroad Tycoon and Unreal every now and then.
As far as watching tv on the weekend, well, spring is here and I would rather go camping or do other weekend trips. Or get stuff around the house done.
And my class is more interesting that TV, too. Never would have said that in high school. I don't know any other way to say it, other than TV sucks anymore.
More people are going to college.
More people are STAYING in college.
College work is more important than Adult Swim (sad, but true).
Fewer people are watching TV.
It's debatable whether a few people downloading episodes of their favorite TV programs can significantly impact the entertainment industry. If it does so in a negative way, so what? The overall market is driven by what consumers want. If people don't think television shows are good enough to pay for or to wade through a bunch of ads then there's no real loss to begin with. Maybe more people will go outside for a change if the current industry folds. Or, god willing, we'll start seeing some really innovative stuff from other people...
In any case, it's just irresponsible to call something like this "thieving." We have different laws for theft and copyright infringment for a good reason - they're different actions with different consequences. Our ideas and intuitions about whether it is right to take an object away from someone else don't directly apply to making a copy of something. If you don't think infringing copyright is a good idea, that's fine, but I strongly urge you to not to resort to appeals to emotion by calling it "thieving." It just makes you look like you have an agenda.
KILL YOUR TV
My broadband cable modem fees are cheaper if I also buy basic cable TV than if I don't. How fucked up is that?
Speak truth to power.
The current concept of "channels" is about to go by the wayside. Instead of having to worry about whether Angel is about to be canceled, you will pay $20 a year directly to Warner Brothers for download access to the show, with no commercials.
I don't care about Comedy Central. I do care about South Park.
I don't care about the WB. I do care about Angel.
Within 5 years, you'll have a Tivo-like device that will allow you to "subscribe" to the show of your choice. You'll probably pay a little more than the current model, but just for the shows *you* care about, which means that good shows that couldn't find their niche on primetime TV *coughFireflycough* will be able to hang around because they depend on subscriptions instead of advertising dollars and demographics.
Shameless Onion plug.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
TV news can't compete - not just because it's not nearly as "fresh" as web news, but because:
1) you get to look at the news you want instead of a bunch of boring stuff about some subject you couldn't care less about
2) If you see something in the news that makes you pissed off on TV, all you can do is throw a brick at the TV. On slashdot and many other news sites you have so many more options - post a well formed argument, troll, just be annonyumously abusive, etc. TV just can't match it. It actually makes you feel like you can make a difference to all the bad stuff that happens in the world. and who knows, you might just be right!
1. Participants (people living in a house, people building a house, etc).
1b. Making the people dumb is recommended but optional. Having them get arrested is a plus (real world, frat life, sorority life, etc)
1c. Scantily clad people recommended but optional. (ala survivor, road rules, real world, etc)
1d. Making the people compete for something is highly recommended.
2. Dependant on implementation of 1d: Judge(s) (selected from among the competitors or occasionally someone different, one or more people decide who stays and who goes, who gets the guy or girl, or who gets the house and who doesnt, etc). More aloof observer type shows may exclude this (frat life, sorority life, etc)
4. Lots of money involved, either towards snazzy houses/cars for participants or as rewards and greed fuel
and there you have it
Too many lawyers, doctors and metrosexuals for the demographic.
In TV economics, you are not the customer, you are the product. Corporate advertisers are the customers, and they pay big bucks for your eyeballs.
Makes me feel dirty every time I think about it. I stopped watching shortly after this was pointed out to me.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
With users spending so much time playing video games, and piracy on the rise, why don't video game manufacturers put ads into the game itself? In this case, for example, those ads could be where you normally see ads in a football game, on the scoreboard or on the field, sponsoring a stadium. The ads could be downloaded from the internet during play, so they would be updated as frequently as the developers wanted. This would also help with piracy, as even if a user pirated a game, they would still be downloading and viewing the ads, which would make the developer money.
Of course, there are a few things that might stop this... If the ads were removed from the pirated version it obviously would not work. The ads would also have to be non-intrusive or the user would simply play something else (I know I would).
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
That's what in-show product placement is for, and why it will become more widespread.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...conclusions that will shock, I say shock, the average Slashdot reader
Am I the only one who thought of the rooster from looney toons when I read this?
I'm watching less CABLE -- yes. I was paying originally $45/mo a couple of years ago for the basic type with the extended channels and maybe one premium (HBO). That's it.
... who is being bought out by who?
Then they _forced_ me to go digital to get the same channels. That's another $5/mo rental. Then the prices went up. Then they went up again. I forgot who I originally had -- I remember not liking AT&T cable, not too impressed w/ Comcast
When it was hitting almost $70/mo for the *SAME* services I decided to cut them. I put it to $12/mo "television basic" and haven't really noticed. Maybe two or three shows are watched during the week (my wife and I) with anything being looked forward to on the weekend (HBO). Fortunately the cable company screwed up (go figure) and left the filter on the line, but did disconnect everything else.
If I could I'd KEEP HBO for $12.95/mo. Al-a Carte if I could (and legislation is in the works to force this I believe?). HBO will be going shortly as Comcast moves their channels around (again) and the filter will be useless. HBO and everything else is on their digital packages _only_ and start around $60/mo for anything decent.
My solution? I'll leave the laptop somewhere and record HBO on Sunday for a couple of hours and maybe Mac a movie here and there as wanted. Screw them. Otherwise Raymond is nice before bed and TLC and Discovery are cool, but for $60/mo? Nah.
The dubbing/localization will be a six trillion dollar industry, and account for 60% of the country's employment. The other 40% will work for Homeland Security.
--- Ban humanity.
Nick Jr., Noggin, etc.
The kids DVDs.
The only time my wife and I watch TV is on Sunday night to watch FOX, and even then only occasionally because of the cancellation of Futurama.
Futurama, King of the Hill, The Simpsons, and Malcomn in the Middle - 2 hours of solid laughs.
Then FOX Screwed it up. Sometimes it is easier to put on Bob the Builder for the kids.
The one that quoted CmdrTaco--at least, it was once you turned on the Microsoft Office revision tracking.
^ H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HPeople like to know that they are rising above," he said. Along with compelling storytelling, he said, many games provide a social circle, which adds "the water-cooler factor" in real time
__INTERNET_GEEK_GUY__ is both a guy and an uber-guy, as co-founder of the online site Slashdot, a news and discussion site popular with computer devotees. Mr. __GEEK_LAST_NAME__, who admits to putting much of the rest of his life on hold when a "really good game" comes out, said that many of his readers take pride in denouncing television.
"The New York Times kicks ass and^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
There's a misnomer if I ever heard one. So far, I've yet to see any reality show that bore any resemblance at all to the things I might encounter in my daily life. I consider myself to be a fairly cosmopolitan guy, too.
The shows I've seen that come closest to it are shows like Dave Atel's Insomniac. Hell, that's a comedy. It's not even a reality show, yet it's truer to life. As Homer would say, "It's funny because it's true."
It's sad but, in a morbidly predictable fashion, it's also very apropo.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
When my wife and I moved into our new house, we hesitated on transfering our cable (>$60/month) because we were considering satellite. We were without cable for a month before we decided we didn't miss it. It's been over a year now. We have rabbit ears on our HDTV that we use to watch the occassional episode of Jeopardy or the local news. The rest of the time, we make good use of our Netflix membership. We buy the really good stuff (Firefly, Futurama, Family Guy) on DVD. Strange how the stuff I buy was on TV at one time, but cancelled. Maybe that's why I don't miss my cable...
I can surf the 5 local newscasts web sites at 10pm in less than 30 minutes and see all of the video clips that I want without turning on the tv.
That's why TV local news is a waste of time.
I can repackage everything coverd in all 5 newscasts in less than 30 minutes.
Sorry to say, this shouldn't be that shocking. For the last few years, we have all seen television quality fall through the floor.
Instead of blaming Nielson's ratings, perhaps these TV execs should look at their own programming. I mean, if you look at primetime anymore, you have very few options on the major networks, like NBC, ABC, Fox, WB, etc: Reality TV shows (rehashed versions of the same old crap), News Shows (Rehashed versions of the same news stories with too much sensationalism and not enough real news), Cop/Lawyer dramas (How many different spinoffs of Law and Order CAN one network put on the air in one week?), and senseless "hip, urban comedy" (Dave Chappel show, Hugleys, etc etc, that all seem desperate to try to be Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, and others that came before, with nothing really new, exciting, or even original in their scripts, acting, or casting.
I mean, look at the Comedy trends these days. [White suburbanites/black innercity/hispanic] person and group of [multiracial or uniracial] friends discuss [the days events, sex, money, school, other pressing topic] in humorous [vignettes, soliloquy, anecdotes] while surviving in [unreal urban/suburban/barrio] setting and much hilarity ensues.
Same with the tv crime drama... I mean, how many of those are there? Law and Order, law and order CI, law and order SVU, CSI, CSI Miami, NYPD Blue, etc etc... I mean, the ONLY original cop drama I have seen in years (since Miami Vice, actually, and like it or not, it WAS original and set the bar for cop shows to come) was The Shield. In that show, you never quite knew if the star was a good cop or a bad cop...
All channels have reality shows now that are all the same thing [mixed group of people] go to [exotic but clautrophobic area], are forced to [compete with other groups or each other or work as team], and are aired solely for [fights, arguements, drunken moments, crying, etc].
Fox has little right to complain at all. Fox used to be the one with the original programming. And for a while they got back to it with 24, but for the most part, Fox shows the same crap as everyone else. WB is the same. Seems that every time WB gets a good show, Buffy, Angel, etc, they cancel it, and that show is bought up by UPN who keeps it going. Fox and WB adn UPN all have the same comedies (all pretty much black urban comedies, or repeats of Friends), and their sportscasting sucks.
Just like the Music Industry, only the TV networks dont have Napster and Kazaa to blame for declining vierwership.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Simply you can't control those silly characters they appear on tv screen. You can't select news/political propagamnda content you are interested in. That's why computer games are superior over sitcoms as well as interent is.
I have no tv box for more than 9 years since.
There you are, staring at me again.
I try to seek out commercials. Why is AdCritic (or something like it) not free, sponsored by the very ads they offer? You'd think advertisers would be keen on having people download and view the ads, much less knowing exactly how many people have done so... I actually enjoy watching a good commercial, but you'd think distributing them was a crime. Pretty much my only source is P2P.
I don't like commercials in the middle of shows so much, but can tolerate product placement. I think more shows will head that way. They pretty much have to!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I had pretty much gotten to the point where I didn't watch any TV until my son was born. Now I am temporarily back watching TV when I rock him to sleep or feed him. I think this is TV's only real hope:to fill in the time when you want to be entertaigned, but cannot be an active participant. This is similar to the shift radio went through: they are now used for times you want entertaignment, but need your eyes elsewhere like when you are driving or jogging.
Unchanged for 50 years, it's incredibly syncronous. Your content is time-slotted, and you have to make plans to watch TV. Tivo and Reply fix that, which i s why I still watch at least 10 hours a week. If it weren;t for that, I'd have given up long ago.
With a PVR, TV is becomes a high-bandwidth syncronous bit stream. On my PVR it becomes richer, I can fast forward, pause, slow, and rewind. While that is going on, I'm on the computer assililating on-dempand content. Content like the famous nipple shot.
Which brings the FCC in. They keep TV uninteresting. They signifigantly devalue it. I have to go to the web for all the juicy stuff.
Now I've often wondered about a Hybrid channel. Most have an online presence, but something that is really on-line, with a content delivery channel on TV. Say like TRL on MTV being TRL via internet. Hell make all of MTV TRL and have software order the videos on a ranking. Get people out of TV, and get your audiance controlling it. Then let thier PVRs pick it up... TV will cease to be the medium it has been, in instead it'll be a one-way high broacast bandwidth stream. Hell, "download" a linux ditribution at 51 megabytes/sec by capturing it to your PVR (~500x400, 256colors) then decode the frames. (And that does not include the 2 22.1kHz stereo channels)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
One thing to note is that broadcast TV is targetting towards women and kids. (Notice how all married couples these days are a smart, attractive wife and some schlub of a husband?) Cable tends to skew toward males, but it's a very fragmented market. Maybe if they ever created a show with a PLOT ...
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
What is Tv, but entertainment? what does the internet give us? what about video games? going to the movies? it's all entertainment. In my case, the internet version of entertainment consumes the majority of my time. It's far more convenient for my personal tastes... and honestly, after a few weeks, Tv just doesn't seem so appealing. Hmm... perhaps my addiction to webcomics has slowed down my attention span enough that Tv shows simply move too fast for me anymore :)
:/
You know what this means though. Tv will just find a way to bring it's 'goodness' to the internet in a way to make it unavoidable to ignore. I can't wait...
-John
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and hoping for different results"
Simpsons.
24.
(ironically, they're both on Fox, which has a reputation for having the worst news in the world.)
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
I blame it on Reality TV. Those shows have brainwashed my wife. I can't pry her away from her Real World 35 and Survivor East L.A...
I am no longer the master of the remote. I feel ashamed...
I don't think reality TV is dumb at all. Yes it is very CONTRIVED, but that is a different thing. It's like a giant experiment where you get to guess various peoples reactions to events, and also try to guess what the next contrivances will be.
It's way more mentally stimulating than any scripted show, because the reactions are far more unpredictable and you get to see how group dynamics are affected by various kinds of people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even the weather channel is in on this... insted of showing the weather when you want it they show 'storm stories'. They do anything to keep you from getting the info you want so you stay tuned.
Other channels need to trim the number of ads from their shows, how many times have you watched a movie and they stretch the last 10 minutes over a half hour? The only time I watch a movie on tv now is if I am stuck in a hotel room.
love is just extroverted narcissism
http://one_foggy.tripod.com/sounds/afu_thinkin.wav
second try
People say the TV programme consists to 99% of high evolution crap. And they are right. There is nothing left on TV that would draw my attention, save the news. And those I can retrieve on the Internet.
If I still had a TV, I would have to pay about 30+ $ in a month just for the sole purpose of having a receiver. Because TV nowadays sucks, and because it is way too expensive (you get ripped off in this country by some awkard company called 'GEZ'), I got rid of it once and for all, years ago.
There are a few repeats that I miss, but I might be able to get those on DVD eventually.
Leopard cub
The Fox Exec is missing the obvious. No one really cares about the madcap antics of "Joe Billionaire" or "Win a Date with a Fat Slob" (sad really, since I fall into that category). Even televisionwithoutpity.com closed their viewer forums and halted weekly recaps of many programs due to lack of interest. This should tell the networks something. Reality television is just the latest wave of trash that networks have been churning out for years. Does anyone remember when television was innundated with dreadful sitcoms? My father complained about that twenty years ago. The decline in ratings is nothing more than a reflection of viewer dissatisfaction. I pay the garbage man to haul away my refuse, then I pay the cable company big bucks to have them pipe more garbage back into my home. This thread has inspired me to kill my television.
Cost = Fixed Costs + Expenses + Profit
Lower anything on the right to lower the cost. If they pay stars less, they will be able to offer cheaper advertising, or make more off advertising. Friends still sucks if you pay the stars less and even then it won't necessarily bring the viewers back.
Everyone (in theory) pays taxes, so lowering taxes only lowers government revenue. The government isn't trying to attract those darn 18-35 year olds. They have a captive audience. So lowering taxes just reduces how much money they have to spend.
I'll leave who gets taxed argument for another day. You may be interested to see this chart of just how much Senators and Representatives make each year. That's 3 to 5 times the median income as determined by the US census.
Anyway what the article really means is "Hold on! No discount to advertisers until we double check the numbers ourselves". Screw them. Make good products, at low prices and get good ratings in Consumer Reports or something similar.
According to Melinda Elkins, a coworker of Green's at The Frame Job, a Chapel Hill picture-frame shop, Green steers the conversation toward television whenever possible, just so he can mention not owning one.
I'm not a young man, you insensitive clod!
Any time I turn on the TV, I love to see the brilliant women triumphing over idiotic men who couldn't possibly understand the nuances of daily life half as well as a woman. Those stupid husbands. All they do is burn food on the grill and screw up the DirectTV satellite. Of course, I feel like I need to watch more of this sort of thing to figure out how women and kids got so smart.
And thank GOD for gay men who are perceptive enough to tell us what to wear. Men's fashion has been in such a rut before these shows came along, Since Mr. Rodgers died, I didn't know WHAT sweater vest was in. Now, thanks to the "fab five," a hapless modern bozo like me can wear clothes that will look hopelessly outdated next year, just like the smart, professional women do.
But for the really hetero alpha males, we have shows about "Beer" and "Women with Tits." These cater to my testosterone tendencies without insulting my intelligence or sense of chivalry at all. It's enough of an outlet for me that I don't feel like I have to run through Circuit City anymore with drool trailing behind me, even though my wife will let me do that on occasion.
I hope they make more shows with the twenty-something male in mind. I'd like to see more obnoxious behaviour, especially related to beer and sports, which pretty much are the only things to occupy my consciousness, being a man and all. And plenty of sex, but please, only sex with strippers and ditzy sluts with huge boobs. Real women are intimidating to me.
Keep it up, guys! You'll never lose me as a viewer.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
The BBC is pretty good value for money. GBP 121 ($63) per year payable by every owner of a colour TV in the country, (GBP 40.50 or $21.30 for black & white) and you get top quality public broadcasting that appeals to the mainstream without having to fill the airwaves up with advertisements. They also produce a few digital TV channels that you can subscribe to. Sigh, I cling to the hope that one day slashdot will recognise pound signs.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I hate watching TV simply because there is ZERO mental effort required. (I can't stand it when my brain feels idle. Makes me crazy.)
I admit it. I watch TV. I watch crap. I'll watch Fear Factor and Average Joe. I'll watch the late local news, Nightline, Conan and World News Now, if I'm awake. I'll watch 20/20 and the West Wing. Football Sundays I'm glued. I'll watch Perfect Strangers reruns. I'll watch the Man Show and Howard Stern - even episodes I've already heard on the radio. I'll watch Scooby Doo, Space Ghost and the Simpsons. I'll watch Star Trek in any way, shape and form. I'll watch the Sopranos and The Practice. I'll watch QVC and infomercials. I'll watch 24 and 60 minutes.
So YOU may be watching less TV, but I'm not. It's the ultimate brain candy. And someone needs to pick up the slack.
Then again I wonder if they are producing this crap for girls KNOWING guys are watching less.
:) However, you do notice some other disturbing things. Pay attention during the "Power Block" on Spike. Of course, you see commercials for car products, tools, and whatever, but notice the way the commercials are pitched. Lots of special effects, shouting, and flashing lights. The same type of visual stimulation you'd use to capture a child's attention, or people with short attention spans and stunted maturity. Even more disturbingly, you see an unusually high concentration of commercials for credit counseling. Apparently, SpikeTV thinks its viewers are young, poor, hyperactive males with little earning power. In order to afford the expensive "car-toys" on their shows and commercials, they offer them credit and bankruptcy help. Hmm. And we wonder why the country's average personal debt load is so frighteningly high. They are pushing a culture of borrowing and short term vision for immediate gratification.
You've unknowingly hit on a very fascinating sub-world of advertising, the "target demographic." If you want to know who the networks think are watching, then pay attention to the commercials. This is actually one of my morbid curiosities. I sometimes get a kick out of flipping to some outrageous, twisted show, just to see the commercials and see who the network thinks is watching. Sometimes its funny, sometimes its scary.
For example. What kind of commercials do you see during "The Apprentice?" I would think that a show like that would appeal to men, so I would expect to see manly commercials. Yet if you notice, you'll see that there are a surprisingly high number of commercials for feminine hygiene products, cleaning products (whose commercials always feature women, exclusively, by the way - so much for equal contributions in the home and eliminating stereotypes, eh? Where are the men in those commercials? At work? Is that what we're supposed to conclude?), and vaccuum cleaners.
Now flip over to SpikeTV. I guarantee you'll never see a maxipad commercial there.
Finally, one last, even more revealing example. I was home sick from work the other day, and had the TV on. To entertain my little voyeuristic interest, I had it on FOX for a while. Examining FOX's target demographic is among the most easiest, funniest, and scariest, all rolled into one. You can immediately tell that FOX caters to the heavily conservative, religious audience, with low income and a very gossipy nature. The shows they run during the daytime are trashy talk shows and court "reality" shows with lots of yelling. The commercials are even more revealing. Lawyers come on once or twice every commercial break asking if you've been injured. Apparently, if you've been hurt, even through your own stupid fault, they'll find someone else to blame (and, of course, to sue).
Scads of credit counseling/consolidation commercials. Lots of ads pitching trade school or diploma programs. Apparently, the demographic that is home during the weekdays, watching FOX is poor, uneducated, conservative, voyueristic, and looking to get rich quick.
I don't do it often, but when I do watch TV, I enjoy trying to read between the lines and see what networks and advertisers really think of their viewers. It can be quite enlightening.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I disconnected my cable, thats how infrequently I watch TV anymore. I don't miss it.
Most shows I really want to watch anymore I can get from the library (hey cool, a legal place to get stuff and I don't have to search very hard)...
The exception is live sports, in which case I can either go to a bar or a friends house.
The thing is, if they offered a "pay-per-view" service where for a nominal charge I could watch my program whenever I wanted free from commercials, I wouldn't mind shelling out say $2 to see a week old episode of something, for the convenience of not having to mess with anything.
I'm surprised that the execs are whining that "the numbers don't add up", when 50% of the new programming out there today is "non scripted television". The stuff is basically Yenta-vision - a substitute for gossip and "goodness gracious me" scandal-titillation. Guys don't go for that much (there are always exceptions), so is it much of a surprise that the only men watching the stuff are ones who are dragged into it by their SOs?
-BbT
...if you like your women to be interactive.
Today the TIAA (Television Industry Association of America) announced that it's suing the internet and video game console manufacturers for stealing away viewers.....
Then, no one is being hurt by you downloading that episode of your favorite show and deleting it when done.
The NYT article states that
TV networks are expensive, actors, satellites, cameras, etc all paid for by advertising, having to buy a TV to watch it all, etc, yet it's all free to me the consumer.
Porn sites are much cheaper to run and seriously less to produce content. I doubt any porn star gets a Million a pop.
OK, so we know where the guys are, it's cheaper to operate, plus you can even determine if they saw and/or clicked on your ad.
QED
Advertisers should pay porn sites and they should all be free. Free porn brought to you by Doritos, Mountain Dew, and the new Mitsubishi.
My local college station, KUNM 89.9, has been broadcasting some really worthwhile stuff.
They play the usual line of NPR news programs (where coverage of events lasts longer than a 30-second soundbyte), there's a local call-in show that's not half bad, and the human interest content of All Things Considered actually manages to interest me.
There are some interesting snippets that they throw in for more ecclectic tastes as well. A short astronomy program called StarDate (from the McDonald Observatory) airs without fail at 7 o'clock, just as the stars are coming out. Radio dramas are still alive too, both classic shows and contemporary new shows.
The radio entertaining and informative and I don't have to sit my ass down to pay attention to it -- I can listen as I clean the house, do some light reading, or surf the web. And since it's a public broadcasting station, the only ads I have to listen to are the notices of other programs I might be interested in, a short blip naming sponsors, and the bi-yearly pledge drive. I feel more than compensated for.
I'm considering getting a Hauppage TV-FM capture card, not so much for the video capture (I do a little capturing here and there though), but mainly for the radio tuner. From there, I plan to see if I can set up MythTV to auto-capture the rest of the radio programs I can't listen to during the workday.
Best of all, it's a community network, reflective of the people who actually live here. Aside from the syndicated stuff, many of the shows are produced right there in the station. I have an outside chance of bumping into the owners and operators of the station in the grocery store -- No nationalized ClearChannel mouthpieces here.
TV -- Bah. It's little more than a DVD monitor these days, and I although I feel a bit out of touch when my friends talk about what's on, I feel like by switching on my radio I've gained more than I've lost.
...broadband, Netflix, sattelite radio (XM).
I can't stand TV anymore. There's nothing to watch but cheesy "reality" shows and actual or defacto infomercials. And for this I pay $50 a month? I spend more time reading online anyway. In the last few years, any time I had the TV on, it lost out to something else for my attention. All it was doing was blaring away in the background. So I got rid of my cable.
My only reservation about cutting the cable was missing important news. Then I discovered XM radio has CNN, CNBC, C-Span, BBC, etc. You don't actually have to "watch" this stuff -- the audio is fine. So this replaces my TV news now, for $10 a month. I enjoy the rest of the 100 channels too.
And movies? Other TV shows? Netflix! Who cares if the Sopranos on DVD is a season old -- it's new to me! All you can eat, for $20 a month.
Broadband? DSL. 30% cheaper than cable internet, and way better service.
So there you go -- broadband, sattelite radio, and Netflix. Oh, and NPR too.
May have more to do with the fact that their is nothing worth watching on and less on the alternative entertainment that now exists. The execs. told us exactly what they think of us when they cancelled farscape: your demograhic doesn't matter. Well, now it seems it does. Other than Star trek (which isn't very good), adult swim, and stargate, their is really nothing for ppl our age on tv. If we didn't have the Internet to escape to, we would just be going out instead - not watching shit we don't want to see. If they aren't going to produce stuff we wat to watch, we won't.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
I first thought that they were doing the 40-minute episodes to keep folks from channel-flipping over into the middle of another channels 30-minute show, but then I also realized that they could likely cut product and advertising costs by only having to produce 3 shows in a 2-hour timeslot, instead of 4.
Those crafty bastards....
The last time I wrote code, it was Morse
In the UK you get a 3 minute slot of adverts every 15 minutes. That means in a 30 minute programme you have exactly one (1) advert break.
In the USA you'd have one directly after the opening titles, then one in the middle and then one just before the final credits. The final credits?? Why on earth are people going to stick around to see the credits and then ... a whole bunch more of adverts??
Seriously, the USA has gone advert crazy. When I went skiing last year you'd even put adverts on the bar that goes over your knees on the ski lifts.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Mr. T.V. Executive,
;-)
If the news of this 18-34 male viewer decline disturbs you and you wish to explain it, you can start by simply performing a statistical analysis of this Slashdot article's comments (many of us are 18-34 males). Hint: Check for the number of posts complaining about too many reality shows.
I'm a 25 year old male, and I might watch more TV if less of it were catered directly to the teenage/gossipy girl demographic.. It's not that hard to figure out that "Hmm, now that we show 20% less of a demographic's favorite shows (and show certain reality shows that are actually repulsive to this demographic), we've lost 20% of our viewership from them".
P.S. For those actual TV execs reading, if you really want me back, show more Star Trek next generation (or other sci-fi will work), racing, and sports
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
I am a male 18-34. I hadn't had cable or even just tv in many years( not since i moved out of my moms house, like 10yrs ago). Always just watched movies and stuff on my dvd player. Then a few years ago when i could d/l tv shows i started doing it. I still didn't watch many shows as i really don't enjoy most of what tv offers. So, i've moved in with two girls that can't live without cable recently. Great i thought, now i can watch the shows as they play on tv. But you know what? Cable really sucks. I don't want a time frame that i must watch to enjoy the shows i really like. And when i've turnded on the cable i find myself just clicking through hundreds of chanels of mindless crap. Only to turn off the tv and go back to my computer and d/l what i want. Now, i have no problem buying dvd's of the shows i watch. And i do buy them when they are finally released. And i would easily pay a couple bucks to watch a tv show or more for the whole season streaming onto my computer. Can the entertainment buisness do this?
i have a cat named george. RAWR!
Isn't it illegal not to watch television?
After all you are stealing time and money away from the poor advertisers.
Isn't there some sort of law against this? Time piracy or what-ever.
If everyone watches TV Shows only on DVD, eventually there will be no more broadcast television shows. In the United States, television is an ad supported medium. Shows like the Simpsons exist because high ratings equate to high advertising revenue. You pay for cable television because (non-premium) networks fill a niche market and don't broadcast over the airwaves the same way traditional UHF/VHF stations do.
:) )
I watch television probably more than most my age (I'm 25.) Lots of sci-fi, spiketv, and a news station that I won't name here (my choice, but don't care to be flamed heh).
Television is a huge part of American culture. The major networks have resorted to a lot of crapola reality shows and lousy sitcoms, but occasionally you will find a gem.
While by no means do I think skipping commercials is "stealing" programming, I don't find commercials all too annoying (usually). Most of the time I consider it a tradeoff for cheaper programming.
Advertising is also an art form in its own right...getting you to think about buying something (and possibly actually buying something) you might not have considered before. Some ad campaigns stick with you for a very long time. (It's quite scary when you can sing a jingle from a commercial aired when you were in elementary school when you see at a product at the grocery store, but I digress.)
What troubles me about more people only buying their programming on DVDs is quality programming on telivision will become more and more scarce. Telivision programming (and especially good serials) just might disappear altogether. Telivision programming is different than say, a movie released in the theaters. Both have positives and negatives, but I would genuinely hate to see quality telivision programming disapear because no one is watching.
(Yes, there still is quality programming on TV...just look to A&E's Horatio Hornblower miniseries or Stargate: SG1 for example. CSI, while it has lost the edge of the first few seasons, is still quite good.)
In summary, advertisements aren't all bad. We don't have to watch them, but we should understand why we need them to keep an art form alive. (TV programming is an art form in its own right.)
(I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for this, but oh well
In my case, I'm 28, it's propaganda that drove me away from TV. I do not necessarily mean the classic form of propaganda (even though it did play a role) but the nastiest one. Every TV show, from news to sitcom and more nastily, "educational" program, are basically telling you how you should think, how you should dress, what is cool, what isn't, which event you should focus on and so on and so on.
On the net I read from many source, at my pace, go on disscussion forums and basically make my own opinion about what I like or not and what I agree with or not.
Its not that the TV channel has an agenda (some obviously have one though, ie: fox) its more that everybody wants to be a rock star, the next influential figure of entertainement. Therefore, journalist aren't journalist anymore but editors, every actors tries to steal the show and so on. So instead of watching entertainment, I am watching people constantly trying to look cool or hot.
There is also the new trend of showing the average man as either a couch potato, or moron, or gay, no in-betweens. At the risk of shocking the female audience I would like to point out that in all human history, hundreds of thousands of pages have been written, I'd be surprised if even 10,000 of these were written by womens, all of those being very recent. My point is that men aren't as depicted on TV but since women buy more (statistic not opinion) then men, showing stuff that makes them feel good sells more publicity.
Not on the subject but somewhat related:
do you know why mens are failling more and more in school and are becoming more and more lazy (in Canada at least):
They now talk about their emotions and feeling and that is just plain wrong. Troughout history mens have used their feelings as energy, as a drive, to do something, if no action could be taken when an emotion would take over, mens would bottle them up and, like wine, would age them, would rationalized them until something could be done with it; a song, a painting, an invention that would deal with the cause of said emotion, a war, a castle, anything, but something. When mens speak about their emotion the energy is expelled, gone, nothing left to do but sit in front of the TV wishing to be inspired again, playing video games for the same reason or whatever. Listen to me guys:
bottle up, channel those feelings into actions not word and your drives will be back.
that felt good!
You just need a better thinking chair and a snazzy new notepad to enjoy them with...
Thinking chair. Notepad. Enjoy them.
Thinking chair. Notepad. Enjoy them.
Thinking chair. Notepad. Enjoy them.
We Did It!
Of course Joe is better than the old guy... And as a side note, Tico is the scariest squirrel ever. And if you think they are bad on the boob toob - don't dare see them live. I still have flashbacks that cause cold sweats... And worse - when the DVDs our played on our player in our van, all I get is the sound. I know exactly how to get to the City of Lost Toys - know it by heart... Pyramid. Jungle. Lost City! (repeat)
I mean, tripe like Friends and Survivor just do NOT appeal to me- I'm sure the people that they seem to be losing numbers on are the same way.
Really now, most of the "reality" TV stuff is frigging fixed anyhow- it's NOT reality shows for the most part. And better yet, if they weren't fixed, they're doing some of the damnedest cruel things to the "contestants" with things like Joe Millionare.
I find much more worthwile pursuits to keep my attention when I'm not at work like spending time with my Wife, reading e-books online, etc.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I guess the writer meant for that to be more poetic and less, well, bad.
For the last couple decades the major networks have not only ignored men, but have been actively adverse to men. E.g., fathers are almost always portrayed as morons both on shows and in advertisements, while women are beautiful, intelligent, and generally perfect.
And let's face this simple truth: TV sucks. I can think of a million things I'd rather do than to sit around and watch broadcast television! God, it's just painful! My wife watches shows such as "Everyone Loves Raymond." It's excruciating, even in small bits. In all honestly, I'd rather have a root canal than watch that drivel!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
...not "Reality TV", which are two absolutely and completely different things altogether. Most of what they're calling "Reality" TV is rigged in the first place- something or most everything is under the control of the producer and director for the show.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
My wife and I haven't had "TV" for 3 years. We fall into the 18-35 range. We gave it up because there where 200 chanels of pure crap and our time is worth way too much to watch 2+ hrs a day.
:)
Assuming that I can even find 2+ hours of programming that I actually enjoy, the cost in time for the commercials isn't worth it. I figure my time is worth about $50 an hour. A conservative guess of 5 min of commercials per 30 min * 4 (or 2hrs/day) = 20min/day of commercials * 7 = 2.3hrs/week * 4 = 9.2hrs/month = $460/month just in commercial time. No thanks!!!
Besides the value of my time just to watch commercials, my impression from occasioally viewing elsewhere is that the programming is getting worse: pseudo-science shows (please! how many mummie shows can Discovory air?), too many commercials (last time I watched MTV I swear there were more comercials than content), crappy reality shows, arrggg! I don't even like watching sports any more (would rather *go* and see it live).
Its a TV exec's worse nightmare: Loosing what was once a very mindless and lucrative demographic to a new generation that isn't conditioned too the rhythm of 30 or 60 min programming interruped by predictable slots of commercials.
Although, is it just me, or are children watching more TV then ever -- or maybe I'm just starting to talk like an old man
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I think the links have been different, but we've had like three articles in the past month declaring that people are watching less television. We even had one showing how more people were using the Internet. We get it already!
What is that line from Field of Dreams? "If you build it, they will come"?
Honestly, I'm not watching all that much TV, not really because of the Internet (let's face it - the Internet is actually pretty boring when you get right down to it; real life is so much better), but because it just isn't worth my time.
What shows do I like to watch? I've started watching Deadwood, because it's good. I would watch Stargate SG1 if I could get the new episodes (I've seen all the reruns). Angel is in reruns right now, but I watch that too. And other than that...well, I like The Movie Network, as it saves me money at the local Blockbuster.
Seriously, if they put something on TV that interested me and was worth watching, I'd watch it! But all we have now are lowest-common denominator shows that manage to royally insult the intelligence.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Wasn't it a Fox exec who commented that not watching the commercials was theft?
No, but I'm not surprised that the company that owns Fox News is blasting the research.
Conservative Organization Blasts Research Which Hits Its Business Model!
Vows to Fund Own Research to Prove Liberally-Biased Researchers Wrong!
News at 11:00!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Since I got a TiVO I watch way more TV than ever before. Shows are never on at a time when it's convenient for me to watch, or on the rare occasion that they are there are multiple things I'm interested in. With TiVO I get shows that are on after I go to bed (I get up for work at 5am) like Daily Show and Crank Yankers, and I pick up tons of cool stuff from Discovery and History channel that are on during the day when I'm at work.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Decline in sci-fi and action television. Who likes all those boring dramas and chick flicks anyway. We want action and aliens in action and aliens in action with hot chicks.
Dramas suck.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Heck, there's even Naked News. All news. No fluff(ers).
Method of processing duck feet
It's not the time factor in and of itself, it's more that there's not really much worth watching on TV simply due to the fact that what is there is crap - or at least, there's not enough good stuff on HBO to warrant paying a cable bill once per month. If I'm going to watch something, I can probably get the rerun through my local video store or Netflix or something.
This sig no verb.
Or actually lack of.. TV for the most part sucks...
Sure there is more for it to compete against, but when the product is so poor, its easy t choose something else to do with your time.
That and its been over commercialize.. which doesnt help the dismal content..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Growing up with a keyboard or controller in my hand since my first computer at age 3 in 1983, I am definitely part of this "Missing Men" demographic. Its not so much that I am anti-television, but when there are so many other things to keep me entertained, including, gasp!, physical activities like cycling and rollerblading, I don't have much use for a television except as a monitor for my game systems and DVD. I would rather do something interactive and not passive. The only time I seem to watch TV is when CNBC is on in the background while I'm working on the computer during the day, or if my girlfriend is watching something.
The other two things that have gotten me to turn off the tv are rising cable costs and lack of decent programming, which the article does not address. I'm sorry, but I got tired of paying $120/mo for my cable tv & modem, a few years ago. And today, about the only thing that I want to watch on TV is SportsCenter, CNBC, and the occasional cartoon. There's not very much on that I want to watch. Certainly not reality shows, tired/rubber-stamped sitcoms, or "terrifying" news programs. I'm not sure what I want to watch, but the broadcast networks don't have any primetime programming that I want to watch, and I don't feel like paying for 400 channels only to watch 4.
I'm sure that I'm not the only one with these opinions, I just wish that all the major news articles would say the programming sucks, but that would be a conflict of interest with their parent company. Oh well, I'll just get back at 'em by turning my set off.
Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
1. Entertainment -- Questionable at best sometimes. And rivled strongly by other media and the now very strong gaming industry.
2. News -- Nearly a joke at this point. I cringe at the thought of watching any TV news and do so at this point only when I don't have control of the remote. (Normally I still have control of my feet luckily and proceed to leave the room at that point.)
3. Ads -- Wow, here is a big suprise. People don't care to subject themselves to countless ads about stuff they may or may not want to buy. Small wonder TiVo and the likes do so well.
4. Sports -- While this catagory could be lumped in with entertainment and news it really can be considered almost seperate to a degree. It's one of TV's few saving graces as sports fans can watch things that might otherwise not be able to see.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
May be it is just me but I hate that show with a passion. That crap is not funny.
Not to mention the fact that they go crazy with the laugh track.
The laugh track guy for that show must have itchy fingers because he cues in the canned guffaws after every sentence spoken. {huh huh ha ha ha} What a crap show.{hee hee huh ha ha ha}
No way it is in same category as the Simpsons. {hee hee huh ha ha ha}
It seems like when I go out to a public space like a coffee house, park, urban mall, concert, etc., many people seemed be plugged into some electronic device and semi-oblivious to their surroundings. These devices include cell phones, headphone music, PDAs, portable computers, PDAs, etc. People seemed to entranced by their electonic "personal realities". It can seem strange at times. Its sometimes difficult to tell apart the borgified people from the deranged street people doing the same things without electronic aids. And the earlier generations complained about TV turning people into zombies.
It's amazing to me how those banner ads and similar things in web advertising have sprung up all over. I find those things the most annoying and distracting thigns ever. I'll stop watching a show or using a web site just because of them.
Product placement I don't mind as it can be made to fit with the show, but those banner ads are just way too distracting.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For my wife, who generally used TV as a boredom reliever, TiVo did decrease the amount that she watched. Before TiVo, she thought that she always might be missing something decent to watch, so she'd channel flip. After TiVo, she knows she isn't missing anything. She watches TV, but she watches much more deliberately and not accidently.
I'm completely the opposite. I rarely watched TV before TiVo because I felt like nothing was ever on, so why should I have to flip through channels to find it? With TiVo, I rarely miss a Daily Show episode (that's at least 22 minutes more than I usually watched because I'd miss it somehow), and I've discovered at least half a dozen other shows that I didn't know I liked. I watch more TV now than I did before. When I am bored, the TiVo always has at least a dozen STTNG, Buffy, Simpsons, Futurama, or Family Guy episodes sitting around to peruse.
So I think it largely depends on your viewing habits pre-PVR. The only downside now, I guess, is that my wife feels out of the loop when people at work discuss funny commercials. Then she realizes that it was during a lameass reality TV show, and she feels better.
are not mindless, they are mind numbing.
Here's a little confession. I love games like Everquest and Planetside. But not because I play them. Because they suck massive amounts of time from people who would otherwise compete against me in the "real" marketplace. Every hour some smart guy waits for his +5 Axe of Mauling to spawn is an hour he isn't spending getting his RHCE degree or working on his M.S. in C.S.
As TV is replaced by "interactivity" which is more and more engaging and life consuming, more and more people drop out of competition for highly skilled jobs. THe market skews towards you, instead of away from you. Every time I see the introduction of a massively entertaining ORPG, I smile. I consider it a kind of counter-balance to the effect of all those Indians studying the extra hours and getting Ph.Ds.
Because God knows I'm watching more of that lately.
Why would people be less interested in television when there's so many good things on?
* Real World - network executives get young kids to the point of alcohol poisoning and videotape them for your amusement
* Fear Factor - out-of-work hollywood actors line up to eat bugs for your amusement
* Tough Crowd - Colin Quinn and his buddies validate your racist tendencies
* The Apprentice - A dozen yuppies compete to get close enough to see if Donald Trump's hair is actually a new, sentient life form.
* American Chopper - All of America tunes in each week to see if this will be the show where Paul Jr. hits Paul Sr. over the head with a tire iron.
* Rush Limbaugh - Only in America can the Vice Presient of the United States be seen calling in to an Oxycotin addict's tv/radio show.
* Seinfeld - A "show about nothing"; of course it will be a huge hit. Each week we anxiously look forward to an entirely new paradigm shift in obsessive-compulsive behavior.
* The Osbournes - Watch burned out rocker being slowly driven crazy by his own family.
* X-Play - This is a show that's all about Morgan Web's sweater pies, but I think there's a side theme of gaming, but I'm not sure.
* Almost everything on WB - Lame urban sitcoms that have revitalized the laugh track industry.
* Survivor - Amuse yourself by watching Mark Burnett dangle rice and toilet paper over the heads of starving, back-stabbing media-whores on a deserted island.
* Law and Order: SVU - It's like Dateline NBC with worse acting.
* Will and Grace - Yet another show about 30-something beautiful single people. I just can't get enough of homo/hetero-erotic lust triangles. Rumor has it, Mr. Roeper will return during sweeps week.
* CSI: Miami - Someone died; someone's hiding something; someone's an arrogant/evasive prick; someone's hair is in the wrong place. Not since CSI: Topeka, CSI: Fargo and CSI: Van Nuys has CBS come up with an intriguing, compelling and creative series.
* American Idol - Innovative show involving no-talent hacks (who have slept with the right people) criticizing no-talent hacks.
I'd write more but it's time for the Jimmy Kimmel show.. gotta go.
It may be true that men 18-34 are watching less TV, but I would suspect that these same individuals are bittorrenting more content from on-line sources, i.e. T.V. episodes or anime. Tracking these viewing habits will be very hard for the Nielsen's Ratings.
:-) Go A-Team!!!
:-)
Heck, I know I'm watching the old episodes of A-Team from bittorent.
Oh, and let's not forget the few online TV channels that are available. Personally, I like the ones from Japan.
I don't have a TV because I want to me more productive, and more self-improving. I like to set goals to make myself a better person. Today, I will go dancing. Tomorrow, I will work on programming a MySQL app for an open-source app...just like Benjamin Franklin did with his days :p . No really, he set goals for himself and set out on self improvement. He wasn't the most brilliant person in history, but he was certainly one of the most industrious. How does one become a modern day rennaissance man? Tune out from TV, use the net as a tool and a communication medium, and use the time you would have sat idly for practical purposes. The result is that you will live a much fuller life, filled with accomplishments, endeavors and diversity.
Break away from the mold and LIVE!
And we wonder why the country's average personal debt load is so frighteningly high. They are pushing a culture of borrowing and short term vision for immediate gratification.
Considering the economy and spending habits of politicians, I guess they really do represent their public.
Scads of credit counseling/consolidation commercials. Lots of ads pitching trade school or diploma programs. Apparently, the demographic that is home during the weekdays, watching FOX is poor, uneducated, conservative, voyueristic, and looking to get rich quick.
Sounds like half of the SPAM in today's email (the other half is for medication and 'enhancements'). And I'm at work.
apparently you've never WATCHED american idol...
i've only watched a couple of episodes, but if you truly believe those people have no talent, then you sir are either a moron or deaf...i say nothing of the judges, but those contestants who make it to the -real- rounds...they're GOOD
i challenge you to sing as well as them, if they have no talent...that is surely the least talent one can have...therefore, you surely must have as much ^_^
that being said, i completely agree with everything else you wrote
I think somebody is missing the big picture, here. The Internet is not taking TV viewers away. TV viewers are being forced away by the continual drivel being produced by TV content providers. How many Law & Orders do we need? Oh look, now we have 2 CSIs! Oh, can we have some more generic cop/laywer shows, please?! Oh, here's a lawyer show that takes place 100 years in the future! Okay, you don't want to watch the cop/lawyer show? How about this nice helping of fake "reality TV"!! WOO!!! About the only things I watch on TV anymore are West Wing and The Daily Show. West Wing because it is different from anything else being shown on TV right now, and The Daily Show because it applies comedy to this progressively dumbed down society to show you how dumb it really is.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
On my newspaper, i saw an article that told that in the year 2003, people watched an average of 15 minutes more than the last year
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
For about 130 years, begining with the publication of Kingston's Peter the Whaler, books for guys (15-34ish) made up 25% of the publishing industry's revenues. Tastes changed with the times, so the focus shifted from Nautical works to Dime Novels to Pulp Fiction, Westerns and SciFi.
Somewhere, starting in the '70s, this market was just flat-out abandoned, with the exception of SciFi. The focus became books for girls, as boys were too busy with sports/TV/arcades/cars/drugs to merit the publication of quality content (I mean come on, in the '30s guys were playing stickball, leaving school to work at 14 'cause of the Depression, listening to the radio, and still had time for Doc Savage).
You'll have to look long and hard to find new fiction that is intended for guys without being pandering.
Outside of sports (only reason I have cable), kinda expect TV to go the same way. Only difference being, as folks like John Taylor Gatto point out, in schools you're conditioned to watch TV, whereas literacy is discouraged, so it might take a little longer, but the dropoff in numbers is hardly surprising.
At first, when I got my TiVo I watched quite a bit more TV. Everytime I went to the TV, my TiVo had something good so I watched. But over time, I started going to the TiVo and pulling up Now Playing. I'd see something, and generally, I think, "Ooh, that'll be good when I eventually have some time to watch it." Unfortunately, I never seem to have time to watch it.
My TiVo makes it so that I can rely on watching only what's good based on my schedule. What ends up happening is that I watch much less, because I can wait until later to watch it. And for a lot of shows, later never comes. So I'm watching less.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Might be that the age group of 18-34 is the prime age for reproduction. I'm have a 2 and 4 year old who take all my time when I get home. By the time I get them to bed, I have an hour to an hour and a half before I go to bed. If I'm going to waste it on television, there better be something good on ( which there tends not to be ).
What I watch:
Monster's Garage
American Chopper
History Channel
Soprano's
^ Of course they are all TIVO'd
I'm 39, you insensitive clod!
My Nephew is 15 and can't do anything if he isn't being entertained at all times. He's got a PS2, uses the family computer for online gaming and surfing, cableTV, DVDs, music, etc, etc...
I guess I'm a bit concerned, he doesn't like reading at all (I don't count random surfing as real reading). Heck he can't sit still for 15 minutes, he absolutely needs a TV, game (which he has hundreds) or a computer flashing in front of him.
Donno, his imagination isn't very good. I'm pushing sports, reading, the outdoors and I've introduced him to DnD.
Guess my point is, we've got too much entertainment surrounding us, it becomes a real addiction. I think I'll give up computer/tv/games for a week or two and see how I do.
I'm a big fan of Arrested Development. Sadly, the low ratings seem to be the price Fox is paying for breaking the rules of the conventional sitcom; no laugh track, a fast pace with deep joke placement that requires the viewer to pay attention, and story/character development that spans multiple episodes rather than neatly packaged 20-minute conflicts that completely resolve by the end of the show.
Obviously, this is my opinion, but if you're a Slashdotter that isn't watching Arrested Development, you should be ashamed.
I bet same thing happened to newspapers... ...50/60 years ago when TV started to get mainstream and people started watching more TV than reading.
Instead of newspapers, think movies since both are forms of passive visual entertainment.
Actually, from the movie/TV comparison you can observe a complacent and comfortable industry being threatened by a new business model doing whatever they can to maintain dominance, before trying to improve their product. Sounds familiar.
Thinly disguised troll on conservatives/FOX
They started showing American Idol for 2 hours (running over the "24" time slot). Seriously, if they want to get more guys to watch they should not be replacing Kiefer Sutherland with Ryan Seacrest.
/* Insert some overused slashdot quote here */
Number of entertainment forms increase while number of hours per week stays the same, therefore average number of hours spent on the old medium per person decrease as number of hours spent on the new medium increase said Dr It'sFuckingObvious in a press release today.
The legal workweek needs to be cut down to twenty hours maximum. That way, we will have time to spend watching dead media like television.^-^
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
There is a serious market for ReplayTVs on eBay.
I'm 25. I wish they sold cable ala carte. I'd have only a few channels: Discovery Channel - MONSTER GARAGE!!! Cartoon Network - need I say why? Comedy Central ESPN - sports 2,5,7,9,32 - for the rest of the sporting events everything else sucks.
I didn't see my sub-demographic mentioned, so I thought I'd point it out.
I'm 28 and I end-up with about 4hrs of 'free time' weeknights. I choose to fill that 'free time' with doing chores, exercising, spending time with my family, reading my favorite web news sites, reading my favorite daily web cartoons, reading the couple of technology magazines that I've subscribed to, watching rented movies/shows, and going out. Those 4hrs go fast. At the end of the night, I don't regret not watching tv; my time was spent much better on the other things that I enjoy. My weekends are filled similarly. So, frankly, there is no insentive for me to pay $60+/mth for extra entertainment. Anyone else in this demographic?
"It is one thing to show a man he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth." --John Locke
This guy has a very good point and counter-argument.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Men don't watch because they don't see themselves. To much catering to other interest groups (like the feminazis you mention)
It wouldn't be the first time.
TV is for turning your brain off and PCs are for turning your brain on.
Video killed the radio star.
Broadband killed the TV star.
when I had Direct TV, I watched quite a bit of TV. I got a nice box, which had a nice interface, which was easy to read, displayed video from the currently selected channel in the opper rigth corner of the screen, and allowed me to select which channels I wanted in the channel list, and which I didn't.
The only irritating thing was that when new channels would be added to Direct TV, which happened once a week or so, a bunch of new sports channels, or pay per view channels, would be added to my list and I'd have to go through and delete them.
Then my parents box broke, and they got a new one. Luckilly I still had my original box.
The new box was utter crap, made by a different manufacturer. The background of the menu was blue and hard to read, the menu was slower to navigate, and it did not show a preview of the channel. It sitll allowed you to delete channels though.
We now have cable instead of sattelite, and the latest box once again provides the channel proview, but the menu has much bigger text, and so only shows you what is playing an hour into the future rather than two. It also only shows five channels at once instead of 10. And worst of all is that there is NO way to remove channels that I don't want to watch from the list. So checking to see if any shows are on that I want to watch is a chore.
As a result, I now only turn on the TV rarely, and 95% of the time it is to healdline news, or CNN, or to another news channel. I no longer watch Junkyard Wars, Iron Chef, Ground Force, or any of the other shows I used to watch because I don't remember what times they come on, those times change, and browsing the list to see if there's something I want to watch at random is too much of a chore to bother with now.
In their lust to try to force me to flip through channels, and to see all channels instead of only those I want, they've forced me away from the TV rather than tricked me into to watching more.
They wonder why people don't watch? What if they actually showed new shows for the whole season? Stuff is new for 2 months, then it's old for 2 months again. What happened to new shows all season long?
Um, am I on some kind of strange hallucinogen, or is the date on that Fox recount article Tuesday, November 25, 2003? Or is it both?
I wonder if it would make sense for a group of people (a bunch of techie friends, or maybe the whole internet) to get together and build a "shared tivo" that would reside at one house. People could log into that box, they communally tell it what to record, and then everyone just downloads (/streams) the shows they want to watch. Cost of cable/satellite goes down by a factor of N, but you still get to watch all your shows.
Brown shorts day for network execs is when someone decides to combine P2P file sharing with video capture cards. The internet communally decides what gets recorded/streamed, with the video capture nodes spread across the planet to record on every channel. Then you can either be a content provider and get perks for downloading other content, or be a distributor and have a heavier bandwith useage.
Blah blah blah, doesn't scale, blah blah blah, nobody has video capture cards... Just give it about 5 years. By 2010, I want to be able to watch Australian football matches a day after they've been aired.
The executive VP of Research's name is Poltrack?
"That's amazing. That's like an ice cream man named Cone."
- Kramer
sort of in a continuation of another post i made, but mostly not.. Mainly, I'm largely dissatisfied with the overly reality tv directed content on TV and the overly sexually related content. I have a newborn on the way and with tv the way it is when you see Leave it to Beaver in the TV guide, it most likely isn't rated for family viewing.
The rating system has been a complete failure in every area except to show us that there is a decreasing array of family material and has shown us how far content providers and raters will go in order to stretch a rating as far as possible. Some things deemed T for Teen are probably something a college student would play/watch (games included).
Ratings based decision making has proven that what is popular isn't always best. Sure, people will be glued to their tv sets watching some things that maybe they shouldn't. Almost like being frozen in your tracks witnessing a gruesome murder. Maybe shows would get more ratings if people werent glued to things they shouldnt be. Basically, there's too -much- content out there, and not enough of it is where it should be. People are too busy on the extremes of things to notice the middle.
Maybe more socially up to date versions of Andy Griffith, Leave it To Beaver, Family Matters, Family Ties, Step By Step, Full House, etc need to be made. I remember when there was a time where a family could sit in front of the tv as a group and all find something in a particular show. Everything has become so specialized. There's a channel for everything and those channels are then broken down even further. Alligator hour on the Reptile Channel. Serial Murder hour on Classic Horror Movies.
There's just too much content to be decided by ratings. The TV paradigm outgrew itself. TV needs to move towards an interactive, choose your program setting. Maybe that will bring back the family content and the learning content.
I used to spend hours glued to Discovery Channel, History Channel and TLC. There was always something good on. Next Step, Beyond 2000, Junkyard wars, medical stuff, you name it. Those particular channels are still doing ok on providing good content, but still have strayed slightly although nowhere nearly as much as the mainstream.
I think sex and violence need to make their way back out of the mainstream media focus, and maybe the only way to accomplish that now is if the viewers are in control. Start by letting us pick the channels we get, then as technology allows, let us pick the shows too. Hopefully we'll pick the right things as we get sick of what's wrong with TV today.
On one hand I despise Network TV. Most everything is thoughtless, mindless garbage. Very soon we will have more people who have been on reality TV than are watching it.
On the other hand I guess that is just my opinion because sometimes I think they get it right and have me by the balls. Take 24 away from me right now and I would be very sad. Usually when I latch onto a show it is bound to be cancelled -- Freaks and Geeks, The Pretender, Dark Angel, etc.
As far as news. When are they going to realize that in the age of the internet that "teaser news" is no longer the way to go. If you have something to say -- say it now....Don't run 10 minutes of "teaser ads" throughout the night telling me to tune it at 10...only to have 7 more minutes of teser ads during the news -- only to get a small blurb at 10:27, I already have looked it up online and am way past that.
Oh yea, and don't take away the History Channel from me. The single best thing going for cable.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
At least there aren't ads in the middle of my game.
Oh yeah? What about the public service advertisements in Counter-strike?
Oh, you know.
"Who's j00 daddy? Adopt a fatherless terrorist today!"
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I'm very proud of my age group now. Finally somebody who tells them that their dumbed down BS isn't bought.
Now I'm going to read the article.
I liked that even "reality shows" were losing audience. I think reality shows are insipid (except foe Elimidate!) and the guys I know would not admit to watching them even if they were.
Maybe the reason that people don't swarm around the tv like they did to watch Seinfeld is that the current crop of "hits" are nothing more than unscripted tantrums by people too stupid and uninteresting to even be my friends, much less be on tv.
Everyone I know watches the Sopranos and then talks about it. Maybe better tv, who knows, perhaps scrtiped by professional writers might do more to turn this trend around than broadband did to cause it.....
so true, and damned funny to boot.
I don't see anything much on there that is uplifting or even entertaining. As a 45 year old male, I see a lot more on TV that is either distasteful, insulting or annoying. IMHO it is good thing that young men are getting away from corporate controlled media.
I'm glad you said "there are always exceptions", because I'd have to mention "The Mole" if you didn't. (The first two, not this Celebrity Mole crap.) I think "Mole" was probably the only quasi-reality show worth watching-- regardless of your gender.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Yep - I agree completely. Really, the current situation for television is a few conglomerates with the money, deciding what programs should be created, taped, and aired. All in all, they've done a pretty good job (since, after all, that's how they got the money in the first place).
The thing is, that can easily change - and it will, if enough people decide TV isn't a worthwhile medium anymore.
I think today's television suffers from a lack of creativity, primarily. The shows in the sci-fi genre are the most common exceptions to the rule, and that's why so many of them develop rabid, cult followings. But these only appeal to a small segment of society (hard to imagine as it is being a Slashdot reader, most people aren't into "geek" or "high tech" things). The only really good, original idea they've had in the last 5 years or so, other than sci-fi related shows, was the concept of "reality TV". They've milked that for all it's worth - and it's pretty well burnt out.
(I think a good indicator of a dying TV concept is the introduction of as many sexual themes as possible. This is always a sign they're desperate for more viewers. Therefore, you have new reality TV shows springing up that are all centered around relationships, cheating, and sex.)
In some ways, I think the future of TV might be "low budget". Some of the more interesting (or at least humorous) programming I've seen on cable and satellite has been low-budget amateur productions shown on regional access channels.
The big-name TV stars are mainly concentrating on using their jobs as launch-pads to a movie career, where it seems like the better quality scripts and ideas go anyway.
The really fun stuff to watch may turn out to be produced by your neighbor down the street who loves doing interviews and making documentaries with his camcorder, as opposed to the latest sitcom cranked out by stars demanding 17 million per episode.
My wife and I are around 60 and our TV watching, especially network shows, is almost nil.
This is hardly a new thing. In Newton Minow's speech to the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961, some 43 years ago, he described Television programming as a "Vast Wasteland". Folk's, it's not gotten better.
I will admit to some watching of the History channel, but get quite irritated at them when they delve into pseudo-scientific subjects. Other than that, I get my news and weather from the Internet and the Internet is where I meet my friends.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Just to clarify--I don't think it's me. Well, I don't know if I'm really watching less TV than I used to, but I'd like to point out that the 2nd article linked in this posting had a secondary article that explained things a little better. The group Nielsen is apparently casting blame upon is "DYA" or Dependant Young Adults (young folks under 18-34 still living at home). Nielsen seems to think that they are the problematic aspect of the 18-34 bracket. Not sure why that didn't make it into the NYT article..
To prove further they aren't talking about me (or a number of slashdot folks) I quote:
'Nielsen continues to exclude PVR households, as well as other "technically difficult" homes, from its sample.'
Since I'm not a dependant, they were not talking about me anyway, but since I use ReplayTV, I therefore exist outside of their sample and believe I am free of blame. [ahem]
So please don't go blaming me! Thanks :)
Does this sound like Trusted Computing to you? In TC, everyone (MS, the RIAA and MPAA) can trust your computer but you...because you are no longer Microsoft/Intel's customer - the media companies are. It's their well-being that Trusted Computing is designed to benefit, rather than their users and purchasers. And if it takes flight (along with bandwidth controls) the output will be just like TV - a "push" medium where you (or, more accurately) your money is the product.
It worked in TV, and if people are stupid or negligent enough to let it happen to computers, it'll work there too.
I use to work for a company that supported a Media Metrix. They are a complete load of shit - spyware. They are far from a research company; and how fitting its also a NYT article. - My Ration is different
Both are crimes, but theft is the illicit transfer of value from one person to another.
You just caught yourself up in your own argument. People want stuff because it has value. If it didn't have value, people wouldn't want it. Since people want music, music has value. Acquiring music illegally involves the enjoyment of that value by one party, without compensation to the other. I might agree that it is not a strict transfer of value the way that say, buying a car is, but it is the acquisition of value without paying for it. I personally don't see much difference between stealing a book, and stealing the value one gets from music that is acquired illegally.
I thought the first survivor was pretty good. It was fun to watch ppl treat each other like garbage, stab each other in the back, and completely abandon any morality they may have ahd at the beginning of the show. But it gets tiring after awhile. There is always that point when a person goes from acting seductively to just acting like a slut and reality tv has passed that point.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Agreed. I like TV... I really do. There are some pretty interesting shows out there if you're willing and able to sort through all the garbage. But the only consistant reason I turn a TV on now is to watch one show, Alias, because its the only program I enjoy enough to make time for that fits into my schedule. So many other kinda-interesting programs are on at times that i'm unavailable, or otherwise occupied. I can sit down on the computer any time I want, and do anything I want. I'm never caught going "Oh shit! I missed my Google search time!". But for TV I feel like I have to go out of my way just to try and enjoy it. Thats just not the way young males work now. We (i'm 20) have a LOT of stuff to do, and need our lives to be as flexible as possible to fit it all in. So if you can't provide your service when WE want it... well then we're just not as interested in using it.
So heres a 'good riddance' to TV as we know it from their golden demographic.
Good points.. just thought I would add that the value of information is artificially created by copyright law. Without the government, music wouldn't have intrinsic value once distributed.
People want stuff because it has value. If it didn't have value, people wouldn't want it.
I disagree. J.S. Bach's music doesn't have intrinsic value anymore, yet people still want to listen to it.
-metric
Since I haven't seen it said yet, I'll say it.
... uh... some damn TV show I don't watch.
TLC, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel etc.
And I'm not talking about home decorating shows. The freakin motorcycle / autoshop shows are getting to me as well.
No, Damnit. I want documentaries. I want prehistoric animals. I want ancient civilizations. I want outerspace and WWII.
I'm just dying to pick up documentaries about Napoleon and the Medicis (sp?) that I saw on Amazon. My favorite is a TIME/LIFE set I picked up called Ancient Civilizations ( - it kicks ass I highly recommend it Mesopetamians, Aegeans etc). Another good one is "Hyperspace" w/ Sam Neil.
Good TV - cool knowledge presented to you without pesky books. Food for your brain.
Crappy TV - just about everything else.
Some good non-knowledge-based TV comes out, but I don't think that the TV producing industry has the creativity to produce the volume of TV that exists and have it all be worthwhile. Knowledge TV requires work and thought to put together, but at least you can start with a core of something cool like volcanoes or Leonardo DaVinci. Instead TV types spend their time trying to come up with something cool and instead make
But maybe I shouldn't complain too much. If someone tries too hard to follow my direction we'll end up with "When Animals Attack - 14! Thursday on FOX!"
Just face facts: Fully half the population is below average, and that's they way it'll stay.
There's no shame in being a pariah. -Marge Simpson
I agree!
:)
Today, I'm proud of being a "slashdotter" It shows that men of the future will NOT have their brains washed by commersialism. That we will NOT take their "truths" for granted!
I hope someone will point the FOX execs to this article on slashdot. Then they will know who they are "dealing with", and tremble with fear(for their bank accounts).
Have a good day!
Yes, my spelling errors.......
30 minutes - Daily Show
30 minutes - Chapelle's Show or South Park
Ok, there are those days when I hit the trifecta and all 3 are on, so on those days its 1.5 hours.
I have no use for that kind of programing.
And they wonder why ratings are dropping?
What's sad is that given the dollar spent for dollar of ad revenue, the media giants are still ahead.
This is a boring sig
it's these people who will try everything to take the internet as it is now, and turn it into another version of cable television. the president of verisign tried this, he even stated that the internet shouldnt be used for websites, but for multimedia companies (wonder who had their hands in his pants)
well if that ever happens, we have the internet 2 to look forward to.
I'm sure there's a newsgroup for Jay Lenno and Conan Obrian (the two talk shows I usually enjoy), but haven't bothered to search for them.
Another fucked up thing is that I pay for cable but after 1 oclock all that is on every channel is some paid advertisement. What the fuck? If there weren't other people in the house addicted to cable I would have a filter put on and drop cable T.V. and just use cable Internet.
It should work like this: People pay cable companies for cable. The cable company pays networks for their T.V. shows, not their fucking commercials. The cable companies are like a crazed maniac ass raping everyone. The idiots who watch shit like Survivor are perpetuating this cycle.
Ellen Degeneres, Rosie ODonnell....
most girls on tv ARE lesbians.
50 million stoners in the US & we can't vote out the War on (some) Drugs? WTF?
Voting was yesterday, man? WTF, man, why didn't you tell me man. You were sleeping? Bummer, man, bummer. Is that a twinkie?
We hear the TV networks blame Nielsen. The music companies blame P2P. "The fault dear Brutus lies not in the stars but in ourselves". Music sales dropped when there was little new worth buying. Male TV viewership dropped when they stopped making compelling programs or content that could compete with the Web.
Network and music execs want a sure thing and so they clone shows that get any traction and kill interesting new concepts before an audience has a chance to develop. They aim at the least common denominator. They try to look at demographics and surveys and manufacture what they think will interest us, instead of giving innovation and creativity a chance.
I have seen a huge drop in my TV viewing because with 100 channels I find little mete with my inline options. TV and music execs can do better, but denial and blame are easier than creating,
When I produce offspring and don't get Cable for him/her, what effect will that have?
Given what I see on TV now I think to myself "Damn! TV sucks! I'm not paying for that crap, I'm going to better my mind instead!"
Now I'm inclined to think that that will lead to my as yet theoretical children being cooler and less sucked into the crapfest that is TV.
But think back. Remember the one kid from school who didn't have cable? He was a big dork.
HOLY SHIT! Am I turning into my dad? I'm 29... that would be about when it happens...
I stopped watching TV in 1975 because I didn't have enough "spare" time to do so.
I still don't, and am still having a blast....
L I V I N G !
Oh, yeah...
Plenty of cute girlfriends along the way too.
How about you TV watchers, are ye living, or merely existing?
All these marketing geniuses need to go smell their own backsides.
It clearly never has occurred to them that the problem is --
The programming is sheer CRAP.
Timothy didn't get quoted in the piece - NickFusion did (also pictured). No idea if he's produced any offspring yet. ;)
If I wasn't always so busy, if I didn't have responsibilities that are always demanding more and more of me, such as school and work, and oh, yeah, if there was SOMETHING WORTH WATCHING anymore.
TNT and USA's reruns of Law and Order and L&O SVU notwithstanding, there isn't SH** on that is worth my *very* precious and limited down time.
Wait WHAT!? I'm 23! I'm male! I do SO watch a lot of TV! I mean, just this past weekend I watched...
.
;o)
Um...
Well there was that one time I turned on the cable box by accident, then quickly shut it off. I think it went to Comedy Central at the time. Does that count?
Seriously, how can it be so shocking to TV execs that the Internet, which gives us what we want and engages us, could be so much more grabbing than TV which spends about half its time making you wait for more? And no, I don't wait online - I use a tabbed browser
I suppose it's just one of those "the big established companies are dinosaurs" deals, where they can't fathom a computer being a source of entertainment. "How can these Nielsen ratings be accurate? I can't spend more than 10 minutes in front of that irksome monitor, it flickers so much. And damned if I know how to stop the popup ads. My big-screen TV is so much nicer." By moron's extension, my experience must be exactly the same.
Yeah, I agree that reality shows are pretty loathsome. OTOH it's possible to do some pretty highbrow stuff on a similar budget -- especially if you don't go to some exotic locale, and don't have a big prize at the end.
Big budget work, it strikes me, is mostly when you need exceptionally high-priced talent, or a lot of visual effects (including locations). A lot of the time, I can manage without either. Maybe it would spell the end of long-running series in favor of shows designed to only run for a season (as is the case in a lot of the world) but I could cope with that.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
hopefully, people will get out and do something more wholesome for a change, like get into sports. i, for one, am sick of the sideshow monstrosity mass media has become. i don't even watch tv anymore.
i personally think watching too much of the trash the conglomerates put out rots your brain, so the faster hollywood implodes the better.
Head over to www.savingangel.org to see just how devoted the fanbase is for Angel...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
But I'd like to believe it's true. I had my cable disconnected, I can't get any local stations, and I don't care (it's been over a year since I watched the tube). People describe the latest hit programs to me, and I can feel myself slip into coma. There's nothing there that interests me. I get local news from AM radio, and most of my entertainment via the Internet. The nice thing about content on the Internet is that there is usually more than one source on the same topic, and I can "watch" it when I damn well please.
When I can get "TV" programs like I can get music on Magnatune, then maybe I'll be interested.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
I just moved to a new house, and the only TV I'd be able to get is satalite. No cable, no broadcast. So we decided to forget it since the only thing we watch it "That 70's Show" and "Fear Factor".
We have a large collection of DVDs, and I have my Futurama (s1-3) and Red Dwarf (s1-2) sets, so I'm happy.
My wife spends most of her day on the farm or on the net. When I come home, I'm usually playing my PS2 or watching a movie.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
Maybe it's because I just left the 18-34 bracket this weekend. I used to watch a lot of TV, but now it's just Simpsons, Futurama, and Enterprise (when it's on).
Of course, there could be another reason: Males 18-34 don't want to see "queer eye for the straight guy".
Got my first dial-up CompuServe account in late '86. Coincidentially, we got a 19" TV spring '87 with a mechanical clunk tuner. My parents pushed a 19" with remote on me that they won in '00 (what would they do with _only_ a 19" and who would want it?). Put the old TV by the trash with a note saying, "Works". It disappeared. It appeared back at the trash about three weeks ago. Cool. Somebody else got almost another 4 years out of it.
That's how much TV we've been watching the last few decades.
'nuff said.
The side panel shows how abused the statistics are in the article. Men 18-34 make up 25.3% of the US population and 36.4% of male internet users. Let's look at what that means. According to the CIA World Factbook men make up 49.1% of the US population in total so therefore men 18-24 represent 51.5% of US men, but only account for 36.4% of male internet use. The 23.8% of the US population that are men 0-18 or 35+ account for 63.6% of male internet use. Similarly time spent online and total pages are lower for men 18-34 than for men outside that age group (note that this result is supported by the porn statistics). Yet the article states that the 18-34 age group are the biggest internet users.
Between the allure of high-speed Internet services, computer games and other activities, "you begin to have the ability to get entertained and distracted in a million ways, and not just television," said Rishad Tobaccowala, an executive with the Starcom MediaVest Group.
The world is an amazing place. There have always been millions of ways to be entertained and distracted. People are just too lazy to get up from their chairs to do so. Games and the internet have just provided a way to be entertained without getting up.
I agree that the BBC does a pretty good job of reporting the news without the "Fair & Balanced", aka "Myopic & Distorted", view of Fox or the sadness that you get from watching CNN now knowing that it once was actually decent.
However, why bother? I can pick up a paper and read some news. Yes, a bit dated but still even the Weekly World News is better than most TV news. Or better yet go online and get some news there and in most cases have a forum where you can actually have a discussion about what you think about the news.
Anyway, for me about the only "news" I watch on TV is the occasional Weather channel and C-Span sometimes to keep tabs on congress critters rants.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Now that they've gone and cancelled Angel, I watch CSI and that's about it (Ok Mail Call too). The hour or so of time when I'm not working or sleeping or reading the internet while eating is taken up with subtitled anime. In fact, when new shows come on, I find it strange that they either speak english or their lips sync up when they speak.
I do have a SageTV which is pretty much dedicated to harvesting Anime off of Adult Swim, recording movies off of TCM, pulling old buffy episodes, or catching documentaries off of History Channel or discovery channel.
thanks to eyeTV i watch every episode of the Simpsons, South Park, Chapelle's show, John Henson project, and The Man's Show that airs. the only thing i watch live is sports, though.
By your reasoning, enjoying anything of value without compensation is illegal. In that case, any form of giving without expecting a return is illegal too. That'd be sick.
.., .., .., .., auctioned for .., .., and .., resp." would be ideal. Couple this with a good search engine to allow public and artist to find each other and I think music, games, film, and other products of pure information could thrive without copyrights.
This is exactly what the RIAA wants you to believe. Receiving value without compensating is theft. That is simply not true. Outside the zero-sum world (esp.. the realm of information and other intangibles) you'll find lots of information wheter this doesn't hold.
If I don't respect a lawful monopoly on distribution, then I'm violating the law. I'm not taking any property. I'm not taking his monopoly. I'm not taking anything physical. I'm only lowering the probability of me purchasing a copy. If that's bad, then informing myself must be also bad because it lowers the probability of me purchasing crap products.
However you turn things around, you keep coming back to an artificial construct that is (was!) designed with a specific purpose in mind: to encourage the production of creative works, at the cost of disallowing free sharing of copies and derived works. The tradeoff might have been worth it, but with the current terms and in its current DMCA/EUCD form, I'm personally convinced that doesn't hold anymore.
IMHO we need to move to a scheme where the interested audience pays once, before the work is published. The audience invests based on reputation and bears the risk. After publishing, the author releases all control.
A system where an artist could put up an auction saying, "I need 750,000 EUR to make this production. Collection of funds ends in three months. If the required amount hasn't been reached, everyone will be payed back minus 5% to cover auction costs and other expenses, guaranteed by bank XYZ. Previous works are
The only thing you'd miss as an artist is the income from surprise hits. You'll only be able to cash in on your next production. But this still seems to be a better tradeoff, that wouldn't put off artists in the same way the current system puts of the audience and produces bland, riskless prefab artists. All IMHO of course.
Cheers,
Emile.
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
Now, let's have a look at the TV guide for Melbourne, starting at 6pm, finishing at 10:30pm. Let's focus on the things I might watch, ignoring those I wouldn't bother with.
6pm. Reruns of The Simpsons on Channel Ten; or Doctor Who on the ABC.
6:30pm. Sweet Stuff All.
7pm. News on the ABC.
7:30pm. Reruns of The Simpsons on Channel Ten.
8pm through to 9pm. Sweet Stuff All.
9pm through to 10:30pm. Soccer on SBS.
Let's see. We have a total of 4 and a half hours of TV on each of five channels, or 22.5 hours of programming. Of that, I would watch at most 3.5 hours. That's a ratio of 35:225, or 7:45, or about one in seven.
If I want to be really tight about it, I'd probably only bother with the news on the ABC (and even that is dubious).
Now, considering pay TV. My experience with pay TV was that I was lucky to get a ratio of 1 hour in about 1000 worth watching. And they expect me to pay for the privilege?
I'm planning on moving out of the family home in the next one or two years. I'll be buying myself a TV. Hooked up to that TV, in all likelihood, will be a games console and a DVD player. No aerial, or if there is an aerial, it'll get relatively little use.
When the free to air channels start showing programs that actually engage my brain to some degree, rather than just having me drooling at the screen in a semblance of shock, I might start watching more TV. More likely is that the TV will just plain gather dust, save for putting on a movie through the DVD player, or maybe playing repeats of Fawlty Towers or some other classic show. Frankly, I'd rather read a good book than watch most of the dreck they're pumping out nowadays.
This is simply the begining. When Television was introduced. Radio was the "Entertainment Meidum King". At the time you gad Great Radio!. Real shows with people voice acting, and using all maner of thing to emulate sounds. Basicaly TV withought the picture. As more and more people bought Televisions fewer people listened to Radio. Radios eventualy got used to making less money and offering diffrent programing, A.K.A. Pop Music. Just now Broadband Inter it reaching that critical mass where it is offering people a better alternative to things a diffrent entertainment meidum does(tv). I'm not saying that a 12% in young male viewers is becouse of the net. I think there are other causes, like women centric programing becoming dominate, do to advirtiser pressure. A far as News and information is consirned The internet is far better a distrobution network than anyother alternatives. But the people who are realyinterested in the "News" information are also generaly the most consertive consumers and are slower to migrate to a new medium. (maby) As was mentioned Spike TV shows many lout flashy comirtals that use techniques you would to the the atension of a child, becouse like it or not young men are more like children than any demographic other than thildren. Anybody who dosent beleve it has never atended a super bowl party and therefor has an un-informed opinon. This transition is not yet realy eveidant however it has none the less begun. It will probiblytake close to annother 5 years before anybody important realises this and tries to do somthing about it. It will be at least another decade before the transition is over. but in 20 years TV will be like radio today, And entertainment will on demand based via the interet. whare you have a Distrobution company that runs the servers and hosts various shows. The Distrobuter will charge viewersd and advertisers, and pay content makers like TV today. The content makers might live with that (like most) or they can also gain other income through product placement (like a few). Then the "Viewers" will pay the distroubters for streaming the shows, individualy or as a "season pass" or even a full pass that lets you watch anything you want whenever you want. --
Don't judge me by my spelling
...they'll either throw it back or run away. I think since it's kinda hard to throw all the crap back at the television networks, most people are simply turning away. I think this will be a major contributing factor in the years to come, as well as internet. There's so much freakin trash on TV these days, that it's a wonder people haven't turned their heads to their computers SOONER. The only networks I even bother changing to anymore are Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, and Food Network (I'm addicted to Iron Chef). Somtimes Bravo too, but that's about it. Most of the stuff on television to day is just TRASH. Hopefully more people will stop taking in all the BS television throws at us and go for some more inspiring content, that the internet provides (ok, goatse is definatly not inspiring, but c'mon, there's some good stuff out there....really!). Seriously though, TV is crap these days. Turn the trash off.
"Disclosure: I'm quoted in the NY Times article, and so is one Rob Malda. Mom will be so proud!"
/. link to NYT, they oughta be more grateful than that! :P
Well geez when 5 out of 10 articles in
Two words: The Simpsons.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
That's right guys, we are now going to be condemned that our TV viewing habits have gone to downloading that "evil" pornography!!
I just saw a couple days ago some female televangelist condemning the internet and all the porn. Of course, I came across this while eating breakfast and looking for the news before i left for class. I laughed for a good ten minutes and watched her make statements about even some audience members viewing EVIL pornography.
The traditional media realizes they have a strangle hold on the over 34 market, and will attempt to use this angle of attack on us.
They've started with the 'studies' and try to find any example they can think of so that videogames are responsible for violence. This is the same old bullshit when rock music gained popularity. All this crap reminds me of an old friend's mom who told us playing Dungeons & Dragons will cause us to commit suicide and hand our souls over to the devil.
But we know this isn't the truth.
I'm beginning to think that even Howard Stern is beginning to pick up on this shit for once.
Now quit surfing that TRASH and go watch some wholesome programming.
Yep... I don't see the necessity for long-running TV series, really. Most of the time, the "great" shows turn "mediocre" as the writers run low on fresh ideas, and the actors and actresses get burnt out on doing the same roles year after year.
If a show is a big hit and people want more after the first season or two, then take it to the big screen. (Hey, maybe this will put an end to Hollywood's seeming need to crank out "1 star rated" films that are just rehashes of the same, tired ideas they did in previous movies.)
I think budgets are way too high on most TV shows, for the value viewers get out of them. The fact is, plenty of people clamor for the chance to be on TV. You can run a game show with a $1000 or a $100,000 prize, and really - you won't be short of participants either way.
I'm not convinced you "need" exceptionally high-priced talent for almost anything in the world of TV shows, either. You might think "Ideally, I'll hire actor X for the lead role." but if his asking price is way out there, screw it. Invest a little cash in seeking out talented beginners and use the best one of them instead. You give people the chance to see a new face on TV that they might really like... someone deserving a job gets one, and you save loads of cash to boot.
Television is for people who can't stand to be alone with their own thoughts. The pace is designed to remove the burden of identity.
Well, you guys didn't think it was men who were driving up the ratings of reality shows heavy on emotional conflicts, did you?
Shall we get into the omnipresent home remodelling shows?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
...nothing on.
to be watching TV assumes there's something being broadcast to watch.
Maybe the breast incident finally made people go find anything else to do?
The only media service I subscribe to is XM Radio, which is a constant delight to me, probably because I pretty much stay away from commercials and mass-marketed commentary and just listen to the music while I work and surf the net (I have XM everywhere... home, office, in all my vehicles - four receivers in all.)
The brief exposures I get to television (at a friend's, up on a shelf at our local pizza joint... it happens fairly often, actually) cause me to marvel that people can watch television at all.
I'm not in the above-referenced age group though; I'm in my late 40's. Perhaps I'm just too easily irritated by entertainment material that assumes my IQ is hovering around my age, and the censorship that assumes I am a right wing religionist with an ingrained fear of sexuality.
Maybe a severe head injury would help. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I used to watch it quite a bit when I was a kid, in the eighties, and I still
watched some in the nineties too. I think I had myself convinced I was
enjoying it, too, although honestly I can't remember a single thing I watched
that I would now consider to be worth my time. At this point the last time
I watched any was circa 2000 or maybe 2001.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
BRING BACK FUTURAMA!
my TV has been in the garden shed since the day you cancelled it, and it wont be back until you right this wrong!
They'd better get used to it, because I don't see this trend stopping. High speed digital networks are a super-medium that has the potential to do everything TV does and more. And they can do this in a diversified, interactive and de-centralized way.
The sooner we can make a direct connection between the people who create material, and those willing to pay to consume it, the better. And those who have depended on exclusively owning this channel of communication can only delay this development, not halt it.
Literally!
I'm 31, turned my TV off in 1994 (@ 22).
Best decision of my life.
I know that's not the point of the article, but I figured I'd chip in. If you can bring yourself to do it, you will never regret it. Nobody ever sits on their death bed and says "geeze, wish I watched more tv..."
My
Limekiller
It's not that I am working harder, it's not that I have more entertainment options, it's not that I like my friends more than I like TV, it's not that there are exceptionally annoying ads on TV; these are all true, but they just don't quite capture what's wrong.
What's wrong is that TV is just not the real world. It is a box that is constantly trying to get my attention with shock-value programming or advertising. The most precious thing I have is my attention span, and it seems like people are trying to scream harder, louder, and longer to get it, without offering anything worthwhile in return.
I am desensitized to everything that comes out of that box, and I have realized that it consistantly fails to satisfy me. So I am back to entertaining myself, and frankly, I do a better job than TV can.
So where do you go for "real" reality? I go lots of places myself - I was in a skatepark this last weekend photographing and on a week-long road trip through the west before.
But even these forms of reality can grow repetitive if you go to the same place too much - like work for instance. One interesting thing about reality shows is they show you people you know only through observation, and put them through different forms of stress each week - sometimes stress they generate themselves. It's kind of like watching a new model in a windtunnel, or at least I imagine that's what it's like. Another metaphor would be turning up the rate of evolution and observing that.
I watch about three hours of TV a week, which I do not find overly obsessive (I also spend far more time outside than in front of the TV) - and a lot of that is done just before I go to bed anyway, when I'm too tired to be out and it's practical to do little else.
Pretty much the ONLY TV I watch anymore is reality TV. I cannot really find much of a justification for much else content on TV over reality shows, movies being the only form of entertainment that is probably more interesting or educational. Everything else is way too scripted for my tastes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If it means a few flights into the heart of the Pepsi nebula, who cares? I can make fun about it, the show can make fun about it, and we can all move on with a show still in production.
Perhaps if Farscape had had a few Pepsi nebulas or the Dreaded Swiffer Beat of Swifton, it might still be on the air!! Would that be better or worse given the same level of writing?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I hear what you are saying, but the model just has to change and people have to figure out what the new model is. Perhaps printing your ads on golf balls and sending them out to the right areas would get as good a coverage. Like you say, these are tricky issues but people have adapted advertising before - it's probably the most hardy of strains and the field with the most minds bent to solving current issues.
As for the neighborhood, nothing beats a through canvas - print out a local street map from Mapquest and do a sweep about 2 miles around when you move in. You can find a lot of interesting places that way you'd never find otherwise.
Besides, if that store wanted customers you should have got a flyer in the mail - that's what all the stores around here do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You never answered my question. Sure it's better to go outside and see reality but... if real reality is so great, then what is it that makes reality TV "dumb"? Sure some shows are just hormone-fests and I can't even watch them, but even that I can't call "dumb" - just revolting. In fact I would hazard to say that reality TV can be more interesting that lots of things in real reality, like waiting in line for something with people that aren't very good conversationalists, or riding a bus.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I disaggree. This outright theft and people know it. This is not taping some show on T.V wit ha vcr or taping music over the radio. This is like stealing from the library. Prices go up because of people that download those cd's and movies.
I grew up paying for things and if I want to listen to a cd, I will borrow from a friend or buy it myself. I wouldn't download it.
You people sound like the shoplifter that says that it doesn't really hurt anyone.
'and a news station that I won't name here (my choice, but don't care to be flamed heh)' FOX!!! LYNCH HIM...what can I say??? I've been watching too much Fox...
I have the habit of leaving the TV on as I do other activities. Most of the time it's background noise, but I'll pay attention when something of interest comes on.
There is quite a difference from leaving on ESPN, the news, or the history channel, rather than sitting down watching a prewashed sitcom. So in my house, the TV is on the same amount, but I actually "watch" much less.
Actually I'd wager that if the Canadian TV market was completely open to competition, the Quebecois channels would be just about the only Canadian channels left. Granted, you wouldn't get them in places like Alberta where they're broadcast now for a small minority, but Quebec is much more loyal to their local culture than the rest of us. For example, Quebecois films in Canada routinely make more money than some of the highest grossing English movies.
All the English channels would be quickly replaced by American broadcast channels. After all, the American shows bought by the current Canadian channels do significantly better than the CanCon. The cable channels are already being replaced as consumers lobby for direct access to things like HBO. And finally, the minority language and ethnic channels would be replaced by feeds directly from their mother country. You'd end up with the educated elite watching nothing but CBC (the way radio is currently stratified) while everyone else gets their fill of reality shows and Fox news.
Personally, I think CanCon ensures better programming nevermind the cultural preservation. I think the required percentage should be increased because if the networks aren't producing Canadian reality shows, then clearly they aren't being squeezed enough. And CanCon should also be extended to other media like movie theatres.
...when the DVD box set comes out in a year...
Why the hell does HBO (and everyone else for that matter) wait so long to release shows on DVD? Like don't they want to make money?
I tried being legitimate for a while. I didn't buy cable because it was way too expensive for the handful of shows I like. Instead, I started getting seasons of stuff at Blockbuster. But now when I talk to people who watch the shows when they're broadcast -- I'm two seasons behind!
HBO has sent me a simple message: the best way to get TV is to pirate it online.
Moron, you're such a moron.
I can't fathom how you can get up in the morning.
Some braincells, you lack some braincells.
Did you ever wonder why you have problems opening the door?
Abstract things, the abstact things.
It's difficult to grasp the complex abstract things.
No worries, don't feel bad now.
After all the world still needs sheep like you.
Oh, this is what it's replacing on the bathroom wall: http://www.jkador.com/letter.htm. We'll see how the rest of the res takes it, heh
This is a boring sig
I think the article is biased and sexist, not because the author is focusing on men, but because in making his assumptions about societal trends he leaves out the Women factor. I am not saying he shouldn't look at guy's "leisure pursuits" at all, just when it comes to cashing in on these trends thats where women come into play. while guys are busy downloading music fo free, moms and wifes are on the hunt of purchasing things and making decisions about the family budget.
:-)
I just googled "women purchasing power" and found out that "...women control 75 percent of household finances and are responsible for 80 percent of purchasing decisions". Maybe so , maybe not... but don't tell me your girlfiend, or mom, or wife never tells you what to do
By your reasoning, enjoying anything of value without compensation is illegal.
You're way off the mark here.
Let's say I offer you something, and I say that you can have it and enjoy it, but I expected to be compensated. You decide that you're not going to pay me, and that you're going to take it anyway. How does this senario in any way equate to what you've just suggested?
You're way off the mark here.
Let's say I offer you something, and I say that you can have it and enjoy it, but I expected to be compensated. You decide that you're not going to pay me, and that you're going to take it anyway. How does this senario in any way equate to what you've just suggested?
It does not, but what you just said is not what you seemed to implicate in your parent post -- that there must always be compensation and it's theft otherwise.
Theft is removing something from someone.
Copying is duplicating without removing.
In either case, not giving compensation where that's expected is in some cases illegal, in some cases immoral, and in some cases the expectation of a return was unjustified.
But theft and copying without authorisation are two completely different things. It's much more natural that there should always be a compensation when something is removed from someone, with the gift as the exception. But because nothing is removed from me if you take a copy, compensation is not that natural. The only reason why compensation may be required, is that society has decided to try and stimulate the production of information by granting a tradeable monopoly on copying.
Cheers,
Emile.
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)