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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!"
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TV every now and then, and we still have favorite shows, but we really don't watch much TV, simply because TV has been replaced by the Internet for instant-access news, information, and interactive entertainment.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
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)
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
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,
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).
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
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.
No hurry indeed.
Not only do I lack the time to watch TV, I dont have the time to watch the shows I download!
I've got a piles of CDRs that are THIS HIGH, waiting to be watched.
Feels like I'm starting to have a mindless collection habit, like those people who collect beer bottle caps or something.
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
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.
I'm turning 35 in a few months...does that mean I'll have to start watching more TV?
No, but you will bring these habits forward into more demographics until it becomes the norm.... which is what they are afraid of.
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.
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.
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.
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?
True about the reality thing... ever since big brother, the number of shows that are 'reality tv' have increased dramatically.. including a bagillion new shows and some older ones that have sort of intertwined with the reality tv format.
Back when i was in high school i used to watch X-Files and that was about it. When I got to college I watched a lot of simpsons and futurama. Then I discovered the campus network and realized I didnt have to turn on the TV at weird hours to watch my shows. Then I got further into my major and my tv became disconnected from everything but my home theater setup.
I'd rather be -in- the simpsons with Hit and Run on gamecube or watching the simpsons episodes with commentary or being able to pick an episode i like than having to watch it on tv when they tell me and sit through the ads.
Most of the time, even if i like a series on TV, ala West Wing, Alias, Osbournes, etc., I wait until they come out on DVD so I can watch at my leisure. I could buy a tivo, but the initial cash output is too high. Id rather have the special features, plus DVD sound and progressive scan is the only way to watch.
The day they have HD TV on Demand, where a show becomes available to watch at X time and Y date, and then you can pick from available shows any time, day or night (even if you have to sit through some commercials), I'm in. But I think theyll ultimately need to go commercial free subscription service on a pay per viewing scheme or an ulimited scheme for more money. Maybe pay by airtime. That way if I have a busy month and watch an hour of TV i only pay for an hour of TV plus some base monthly rate. Then if i watch a thousand hours, i fall into the X hours and over group and pay some flat rate.
The TV Industry and the music industry have a lot to learn and fast, about what the people want and what the people will tolerate and for how long.
...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.
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).
Interesting to note how many times TiVo is mentioned in the posts. I bought one three years ago, and can honestly say watching TV w/o a DVR is almost impossible for me now. That's not to say I don't watch ads anymore, either. A few will actually capture my attention as I fast forward, the rest are ignored. I've always thought DVRs could be really good for advertising, once ad agencies figure out how to exploit their characteristics. But as usual, big media reaches for the lawyers instead.
The networks views of video games sure miss the mark, too. TV companies have been flailing around for compelling interactive TV shows, yet the obvious success story is online gaming. Seems to me online games certainly qualify as interactive television. The "tuning" process and consoles are a bit different from TV sets, but in general games are broadcast content produced by studios for distribution.
Possibly the next Ted Turner will be someone who starts a "game" channel. Maybe the prototype is what we find in hotels and on intercontinental flights today.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
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.
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.
What's against posting this in the main article?
Copyright?
And if anything is, can't slashdot make a deal with NY times?
Of course not, because God forbid Slashdot should make a deal with someone -- that might involve that nasty money stuff, and we all know (chant it with me now) that information wants to be free. (Glassy-eyed sheep mode off, now.)
Ironically enough, roughly half the people who complain incessantly on Slashdot about registration-required sites have registrations on Slashdot. The difference, I quite realize, is that it's optional on Slashdot. But what are you worried about? Think the NYT is going to sell your information? Make up a silly age and name and use a throwaway Hotmail account. Are you in paranoia mode? Please...I know I trust the NYT with my information far more than, say, Slashdot's Michael.
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.