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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
Give people TV programs worth watching if you want them to watch TV.
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.
This isn't a far off concept. It wouldn't surprise me to see media companies begin to find ways to attack broadband companies. The National Association of Broadcasters (which is the radio industry trade group) has begun to attack satellite radio providers (XM, Sirius) both on the air (Entercom is airing anti-satellite propoganda on their affiliates) and within the legal system. For example, the NAB is seeking to prevent satellite radio broadcasters from airing local traffic reports. The idea being that, basically, the only thing people listen to radio for anymore is traffic. And if satellite offers tons of channels, no commercials and now... TRAFFIC... guess who suffers? Traditional media outlets are under attack from new technology and they can't cope. Not entirely unlike the RIAA and MP3 fiasco.
There was also a report by Harris Interactive, that while 84% of college students have TVs, 91% have PCs.
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.
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
... 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.
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?
If cost is an issue, then build your own is probably the way to go. There are some interesting projects out there like MythTV that look pretty impressive.
With an Internet connection and some scripts I think you can download programming schedules that make the home-brew devices as useful as a TiVo. Believe me, having reliable scheduling information and automating the recording is useful. It was bliss moving from stacks of tapes, pre-recorded with 10 minute slop intervals on the end, poor quality, to the TiVo.
I paid US$250 about 3 years ago for the service and invested more money in bigger harddrives, time in upgrading, to get my TiVo adequately useful for me. I didn't mind throwing the money to TiVo at the time for the lifetime service; I don't think they were making huge amounts on the hardware sales and they did a pretty nice job with the software.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Actually, I noticed long ago that part of what compelled me to watch a program is the fact that it is on NOW, and I don't want to miss it. So, I started recording programs (initially, on a VCR). I quickly found out that knowing I could watch it at any time made it less compelling and I watched a lot less TV. Now, with Directivo, I have a few programs I watch regularly (mostly news and educational stuff) and I rarely just surf channels.
That's EXACTLY how it works for us. I originally bought my TV exclusively for the watching of football. Since then, I've expanded into DirecTV and got a TiVo unit so now I don't even have to schedule my life around what's on when, I can watch what I want when I want and skip the commercials!
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Something cleverI'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.
Maybe this will happen to newspapers as well, but for now I prefer the newspaper for background/behind the scene news. Currently there are little or no newssites that offer better researched or written stories. Quality goes a long way. Unfortunately, my work also goes a long way, and I have little time to read the articles I would normally read. And internet is indeed great for the latest news. I saw 9-11 first on CNN - CNN the site that is.
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.
It might be worth mentioning that most of my TV watching is old shows on TVLand, all of which are better than the new crap on the networks.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
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.
I agree. I own a TV, but I only use it to watch movies and to play my console games on. I still have plenty of egregiously time-wasting hobbies, but at least they're devoid of the kind of garbage television delivers.
:)
On the infrequent occasions I see some serial television -- usually when visiting relatives or friends -- and I'm always shocked by how obnoxious it is now. Huge watermarks, commercials in the middle of programming, and completely brain-dead content. I don't miss it even one little bit.
I used to enjoy my share of tv, but when most of the sci-fi shows I liked got canceled and reality TV started to take over, it didn't take much for me to lose interest.
I also agree with you on the issue of backlash. I don't think not watching any serial television makes me better than anyone who does -- by all means, do what you enjoy, I just really don't enjoy it and find it hard to believe now that I ever did. What's funny is how many people I know who watch a lot of TV and complain ceaselessly about how crappy it is. "God this show sucks. It's so stupid. Why am I watching it?" Why indeed? Yet, mention you don't watch any yourself and they compare you to the Onion Doesn't Own a TV Guy.
I'd like to say something pretentious and highbrow like "I'd rather spend my time with a good book," but usually I don't.
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
Why do we need "channels" or networks anyway? That's a concept that will soon become obsolete. At some point we'll be getting our programming a la carte (as discussed in another article the other day) on something resembling a pay-per-view basis. It's happening in music, and it'll happen in video entertainment as well...
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.
TV's effect on newspapers was probably not that much, since newspapers are primarily a news medium. Their entertainment value has never been a big draw. What TV did kill was radio. Compare radio now to radio 70 years ago. 70 years ago radio was drama, comedy, music, news, and every other genre you see on TV now (except for porn for obvious reasons). Today, radio is Top 40, the local DJs, and some light morning news. My guess is that radio has only survived because of cars, clock radios, and the good common sense of having one in case of an emergency.
TV may not be so lucky. TV doesn't actually add as much as you may think to radio. It takes away quite a bit in fact, since it's not portable. The internet is MORE ubiquitous than TV can be, so just maybe TV will eventually totally die.
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.
Something like that with the radio interview happened to me once. Someone called at home and asked me if I wanted to participate in a survey. Normally I hang up on those people, but I was feeling bored, so I agreed.
... played some cds. I ... hmm.
The first question was "How many hours of radio did you listen to in the last week?"
I thought long and hard about it. I got on the subway and... put on my mp3 player. I got home and I
"None."
It was hilarious how taken aback he seemed at this answer, he undoubtably was expecting a big number, considering the amount of time I took to come to my conclusion. "None at all?"
"Nope... haven't listened to the radio all week. Last week... none too. Any more questions?"
"Umm, no."
I really don't watch TV or listen to the radio, but with the internet, I seriously don't feel like I'm out of the pop culture loop. I read articles on the occaisonal "big" TV show -- the ones people actually talk about, like The Apprentice -- so I don't sound like I have no idea what's going on, but I really just don't have any need to actually waste my time with crappy ad-filled television or three-song-deep radio station playlists.
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
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
And the only reason people do this is a combination of impatience and television companies not developing the technology to deliver advertisment-free programs via the internet on a per-episode basis for a small ($1/episode or so) fee.
When people do things like this, then TV companies shouldn't be spending their time bitching and whining about copyright and spending their money on lawyers. They should be working out ways to screw money out of folks to allow the consumers to do what they're going to do anyway.
It's called marketing.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
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!
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.
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?
When I was growing up I remember WTBS (Atlanta, usually offered nationwide now) used to do something like this - shows started at 8:05 or 8:35, so if you watch one show on TBS, you may as well watch the next one as you've already missed the start of anything on the other networks.
As for the 40-minute shows. They had a "supersized" Scrubs - normally the shows are 20 minutes without commercials. I think Scrubs (supersized) was 23 minutes without commercials.
How sad is it that even with free admission I don't want to go to the movie theatre?
I was 32 when I got rid of my TV. I gave my TV set to my grandma, finaly she could read the small subtitles on my super duper big screen TV. Ever since (4 years) I read more books, read more /. and occasionaly I watch a DVD on my mini PC that I installed just for that reason in my living room. Of course I use it for email, itunes, /. and internet news as well.
I am meeting more and more people that gave up their TV. I think they should do some research how many people gave up TV totaly. I am sure it is a fast growing group!
The amazing thing is, if you listen to the 'right' radio station during your commute, you can still talk with your collegues about all last night shows without them noticing that you do not have a TV. By the way, my commute was not longer than 20 minutes...
You can download with Tivo and burn straight to SVCD or Divx for much cheaper than homebrew. Look into TurboNet and TivoWeb.
Not having to dedicate a power sucking ($$$) PC to catch tv shows is nice too.
You reminded me of my recent rediscovery of Roseanne on Nick@Night.
Now that I have my own kids, I can't believe how funny and real that show really is.
I was in the same boat.. do what I did.
Troll ebay for a used Panasonic showstopper. They are a replayTV unit with lifetime subscription. I bought a used one for line $160, upgraded the drive to a 120 gig for another $80 or so. For $240 (less than the $299 sub. on a new replayTv unit), you get a 120-hour (extended, i.e., low, quality) unit with lifetime sub. Sure, doesn't have the new broadband features, but it works great. Wife and son LOVE the thing...
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE