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Broadband Usage Up, TV Usage Down
jZnat writes "BBC Tech News reports that the increased usage of broadband internet in Europe is cutting into the viewing of television. This is mainly due to the decreased price of broadband in Europe and the usefulness of the internet. Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive these days?"
I for one use the computer much more often for my media needs than I watch television. News in less than a second is far superior to having to wade through advertisements that you can't skip.
+5, Truth
I never get to watch stuff when it's on, so I just download it.
when you've got multiple monitors and a tuner card?
The reaction to this depends on whether people are mostly visiting the major media companies' sites or are seeing more independent stuff. If the latter, then people are apparently tired of being force-fed by Big Media. If the former, then I guess people are glad to be slaves.
The only things I generally watch on TV nowadays are the news and movies. There are several reasons that I believe the Internet is more entertaining:
;^)
a) Interactivity. You can talk to and interact with people as much or as little as you like, whereas television is entirely passive. You can also easily add to the content (like I'm doing right now) and have your content added to.
b) Control. As I mentioned before, television is entirely passive, and you're limited to viewing the broadcaster's programming on the broadcaster's schedule. On the Internet, you can view whatever you want, whenever you want, and there are a nigh-unlimited number of "channels" available to suit whatever taste you're looking for.
c) Adaptability. The Internet is anything you want it to be. While television is just video and sound, the Internet is a book, a video, music, or anything else you can imagine.
Not to mention that TV shows are available in the Internet to view whenever the hell you want without commercials, but that should go without saying
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
I've never seen anyone actually get anything accomplished through watching TV. Unless you count "relaxing" for six hours a day to be an accomplishment.
:O a movie in realtime on IRC while simultaneously getting other things done in the background is comfort enough.
:|
When I bother with movies these days, I watch them on my workstation. I could care less about comfort level- for me, the ability to critique and O_o and OMFG
Unfortunately, my roommate recently renewed his relationship with the NTSC teat, and now the house is filled with the shit audio quality of a TV. At least he has the decency to keep it in his room, where the malevolent eye of the gorgon-cyclops can't stab into my soul.
...if my net connection didn't go through the cable modem, i'd probably not have cable at all - it's *not* worth the money. That would leave me with network TV - yuck. Boring. Trite. Lame. Soooo, yeah broadband has ruined TV in this house. Hell, if cable didn't have cnn and comedy central, i wouldn't watch it at all.
:)
did just upgrade to 5mb/768k so i'm happy for now
That is an oxymoron!
When toasters first came out, there was a dramatic downturn in knitting.
Can't say I am surprized. The internet has 2^32 channels, mostly garbage but you the user can decide and change channels to any other site in a second. And with so many channels there is something for everyone.
Where as with cable you get to watch what someone else wants you to watch and when to watch it. Not only that, they make you pay for channels you never will watch.
The internet will really pick up once Internet TV breaks through the legal barriers they now face from a monopolistic industry. Yor next TV migth be a computer.
has decreased because TV sucks. While that may sound like a tautology, the long version is that TV lacks good content. Just as the recording industry is putting out more and more cookie-cutter "artists", so is the broadcast TV industry putting out more and more crap, viz. Fear Factor Part XXXIV, Survivor XIX, etc. Broadcast news is generally flat and one-sided. Cable TV still occasionally produces something decent, because the subscription price eliminates the need to advertise, and provides a revenue stream to fund new shows and projects. Maybe Internet use has increased BECAUSE TV has become less useful, not the other way 'round.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
People don't watch TV because it's the best entertainement there is and they're not switching to internet because that's better entertainment. People watch TV because of peer-pressure, because they don't want to be left-out of the discussion over The Simpsons or Survivor during lunch, and now they're switching to internet because the lunch-time discussions have shifted to blogs and message forums.
I know. I know. The internet had a much tighter ass back when we were using modems to uucico to/from uunet. I actually blame google for turning the internet into a lardass. Doesn't need to work so hard now. Just sits around eating chips.
Combining this with that story that Bittorrent accounts for 35% of internet usage and the most active torrent pupose seems to be downloading tv episodes. Maybe people are still watching and just not on TV itself.
pr0n!
"Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive these days?"
yes.
The internet will give you what you want: games, news (domestic or international, biased or unbiased, depending on your preference), pr0n, sports info on your favorite team, shopping, news for nerds, stuff that matters, etc. Whatever you want you can get on demand on the internet. Meanwhile, TV sucks. TV tells you what you should be watching (Look, reality shows, craptacular sitcoms!!), and they make you watch it on their schedule, and they blitz you with overhyped flavor of the month celebrities and commercials every 5 minutes. That's why things like TIVO are becoming very popular. TV sucks, so people are getting a life outside of TV, but there will still be 2 or 3 shows you'll watch all the time, but it's stupid when I have to say "Well, I would like to go out this evening, but I really want to see Enterprise." TV is losing it's grip over the population because we now have an alternative to having to just accept whatever they choose to give us.
I agree with this statement, and would speculate that it is more the latter, at least with the Slashdot crowd.
However, even going to something like msnbc.com online is better than watching msnbc on tv for most people because you can read the stories you want when you want without sitting through all the garbage.
There's no subject for your last two sentences. Who doesn't need to work now? The Internet? Google?
Since this is in Europe. What does this mean as far as the continued existance of the BBC?
However, there are no changes in number of hours that people waste meaninglessly (myself included). All that's changed was pressing buttons on tv remote controls to clicking mouse buttons.
In high school in rural Alberta, growing up with only 3 television channels, I watched around 80 hours of TV a week.
When I moved to Edmonton to go to University, I was able to get the internet (a little prohibitive back home, where you'd have to dial long distance for any BBS...back when long distance was done by the government phone service and cost $0.37/minute).
Today, I have cable internet and no cable TV. Cable TV stopped being exciting a couple years after I had it. You watch all the Babylon 5 and Buffy episodes...then what? I don't even WATCH the TV anymore, even though my 6 channels on free TV is double what I used to have.
Why would I watch TV when I have the internet?
There's just nothing good on TV anymore, with the following exceptions: The Simpsons, pretty much anything on Cartoon Network, maybe half of anything on Comedy Central, and maybe various pr0n.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
Even if only a few people are seeing independant stuff, that's more than what you see on TV.
I like being able to get the Beeb world news without listening to my radio (NPR) or paying a premium rate for cable TV. Whats more, I can get it NOW.
For alot of people, it's the increasing availability of TV shows on DVD that lets them skip the cable/TV....
TV needs an adblock extension to be useful again.
I, too, never get to see what I want when it is available. So I simply do not watch it. PBS, naw, they have gone commercial as well. I really wish the FCC would do something useful for the majority of the people who use media, make the commercials play during the first 5 minutes of a program and never appear again until the next program. They should also ban programs less than an hour long, to keep the media from dividing the shows up into mini-series to play more commercial crap.
I don't know in the USA, but here in Quebec quality TV decreased a LOT. On weekends afternoon we get 'paid ads' for dumb, overpriced products. We get movies that were hip in the 80s (Police academy AGAIN?). Stupid programs (Recycled Fox-branded programs such as car chases, 'funny' accidents, etc). News are always trying to refresh the same stupid debates... when they're not covering irrelevant local stuff (A 80 years old still play tennis!)
No wonder I'm not listening to TV anymore. Google News all the way. When I want, What I want. Yeah.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
In Portugal we have both Internet and TV.
My pet turtle (named Mozart) says this story sucks. He's not very bright, but he got that right.
Sharks and Motorcycles, 24/7. Who watches this trash? How many stupid motorcycles will these gorillas build before folks get bored and move on?
What we do less since we started using internet (according to a survey, source (in swedish): http://www.idg.se/ArticlePages/200412/03/200412031 65340_PFA/20041203165340_PFA.dbp.asp ) :
- 34 % watch less TV.
- 32 % spends less time reading magazines.
- 31 % doesn't talk as often in telephone
- 23 % spends less time reading books.
- 19 % listens less to radio.
> Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has
> decreased...
I suppose that it may have gone even more negative.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Shouldn't it be... In korea, only old people watch TV.
Every once in a while I catch a few minutes of tv
while over at some establishment or home
that has it on and I can't help but
wonder why I ever had an interest in it in the
first place.
About the only things I miss are the educational
stations and even those are wishy washy and
dull now.
I DO spend about 2 hours a day on the internet on average.
I also don't recieve spam e-mail but once or twice every other month. (of course, I've been on the internet for 15 years. Only the internet Un-savvy get spam these days)
People say MMORPG's are a waste of time (which they are) Yet.. they'll easily spend over
30 hours a week watching tv??
Pbbbt! Whatever. Nothing to see here folks.. turn it off.
What are the media conglomerates going to do to regain the control that they've lost?
They won't improve their content, so can they eliminate the internet surfer's ability to get what they want when they want it?
If so, how so?
How will they (further) ruin the internet? How are they going to turn it into a passive means of consumption?
This is what's important to know.
I have a great idea. We'll pump out a bunch of lame content, increase the amount of time spent on commercials and start fuxxing with the start times of the programs people are most likely to watch. Decreasing user satisfaction is a sure way to bring them back to the couch.
It's not that "the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive," it's just that people seem to have just recently realized it.
Regardless of everything else, there is one thing that might be pushing people away from their television and onto their computer.
Cable companies raising their rates at double the rate of inflation, and broadband access dropping in price to less than a mid-level cable package.
1. Woot, I got broadband!
2. Must get money's worth out of broadband, I will download a linux iso!
3. Crikey, this distro isn't quite what I want, I will download another!
4. Blimey, no time for telly with all this ftping, configuring and general nerdiness.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
So instead of getting brain damage from too much Pokemons, Digimons, Barney, and superbowl but actually getting a common culture and involontarily learning a grammatical rule or two...
...we'll get the people's culture hyperfragmented into tiny online communauties which uses an INBRED grammar! K00L, the joys of teknoh-logi!
.
At least the decentralisation will make us as hard to herd as cats when it comes to elections or Windoze. At least it's the tenets of the new relygionn that has catma instead of dogma.
If you already know what "All your bases are belong to us" means, you're already affected. Go see an e-doctor.
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
European TV is becoming more and more like american TV. Same content syndicated and recut for many programs. Intrusive advertising etc.
Its just the average european is more educated than their american counterpart - thus people are fed up with TV.
Aprart from one or two television shows... I can do w/o television.
Its failing to entertain me because:
1) The good sitcoms (or at least ones which appeal to me) like Seinfeld seem to be gone.
2) There is too much "focus" on reality television and game shows.
3) Advertising is driving me crazy
4) The news is too skewed and their opinions are a discredit to my education (I actually watch the Daily Show instead of CNN to catch up on international news).
5) I'd rather read, exercise, go out or watch a movie than watch TV.
Some TV executive is going to have to come up with a spectacular new show to get me to watch.
So when I clicked on the news, it said move on ...
And now it is offtopic !!
Back when TV was king, how often did you hear people say, "I can't live without my TV" or "I can't go back to radio." Now, when broadband is increasing in popularity, how often do you hear "I can't live without broadband" or "I can never go back to dialup." I've said it myself many times.
Broadband internet has become so integral to so many of us (by us, I mean slasdot readers) that trying to find information any other way seems absolutely ludicrous. I find directions with my broadband, phone numbers, coupons, movie listings, contractors, and even medical information. The ability to reach experts in any field with just an email away and the ability to find information so quickly are such selling factors in broadband that I honestly can never go back to any other form of communication, unless it's necessary (i.e. a phone call, or face to face meeting).
Back when I was in college, the internet was in its infancy. My profs had email, but we never had forums, bulletin boards, or listmails (at least we didn't use them). Imagine higher education nowadays without the web, and without email?
Linux at home
Sometimes, I just want to plop down in my chair, pick up the remote, and watch some "mindless" action/adventure or sci-fi show. AFAIK, I still can't do that from the Internet (at least not legally). The Internet is far more flexible, but TV still owns that niche, and Tivo solves the schduling problem.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
All that's on TV these days is news and reality shows. Most of the latter cater to an audience with all the intelligence of a sack of potatos. Why bother, really.
"Not to mention that TV shows are available in the Internet to view whenever the hell you want without commercials, but that should go without saying ;^)"
Well it's nice to see that advertising doesn't work, online or off
I think this is partly responsible for what seems like the rapidly evaporating ability for people to respect each other's political views. Nobody has differences of opinion any more -- one person is 100% right and the other one is a moron, a dupe, a tool, a shill. That trend has been deliberately helped along by many in the media, but I think the unintentional echo-chamber effect of highly specialized news and discussion sites bears some of the blame too.
Whoever said that television was "useful? The Internet is "useful", a screwdriver is "useful", dental floss is "useful" ... television is just, well, "wasteful". Of time if nothing else.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I've not ever subscribed personally to cable television. I'll watch it if someone else buys it, but for me I'm happier with a broadband link and BitTorrent or other file sharing system as most of the TV I want is available online free anyway.
Since 35% of Internet taffic is Bittorrent, I shudder to think the price of Internet connections once Cable companies realize this and jack up Broadband prices to compensate for their lost TV subscribers.
TV downloaders will be victims of their own success. Stop ruining it for everyone, and let only the geekly few know this money saving trick.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Worse they are putting crap programs of the exact same nature back to back or even on both channels at the same time. ARGH. I already hate "home improvement" programs but can probably survive the best of them for half an hour. 2 for a full hour however is to much and I switch the TV off.
This is I think the biggest shift. It is not that tv has become worse. I used to have the tv on in the background and just do other stuff while waiting for something watchable to appear.
But nowadays the non-watchable stuff is so bad that even muted it insults me. There are also to many bad programs behind each other so I just turn the TV off and remind myself to switch on at XX:XX. Except I forget because I am to deep into something else. End result? Even the programs I find worth watching I don't watch anymore. TV really needs to start to worry when I prefer not waking the cat over getting up for the remote.
This is something that is being regonized although more on radio. The Netherlands has only recently gone commercial on radio and instead of getting a lot of different stations aiming at their own group we get all of them aiming at the same group. Result? More and more people switcing to MP3 players and the radio stations unable to get the advertising they need.
More and more tv tries to appeal to everyone and ends up appealing to noone. There is nothing wrong with the occasional survivor, those of us who don't like it just don't watch that night, but when every night has its own mindless show you get a large group of people who switch off the tv and don't switch it on again.
Remember this, TV got big when it was basically on all the time. When people start switching off you lost them. TV is not a drug, there are no withdrawal symptoms. All people got to do to get rid of their addiction is say "no thanks".
Only 1 program of every kind per night.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've always used radio more (olden days HF, but now
internet). Given how awful most commercial tv outfits are they deserve to die, but the BBC is different and always has been. Part of that is down to Sir David Attenborough who set the tone for BBC 2 (science, fringe programs) in the 60's when he was the first director general of the 2nd channel there...
Even now the bbc's web site is so loaded with science and other programs that you could spend half a lifetime just trying to keep up.
I don't miss the tv at all. I have twice as many radio options even just from the uk as i used to do (I'm in Athens Greece and hear more music than most un computer folk in the uk).
Radio always lets you do something else as well , its kind of a background thing.
i paid for cable for the sole purpose of getting the sports channels so i could watch some basketball. unfortunately not all the games can be found on the net. there are some you'll find on suprnova.org, and even some older classic games (bull vs lakers '91 for example). not only are the two sports channels i get are on seperate packages, but the majority of the games are shown on the channel with the more expensive one. for whatever reason, even during the nhl lockout, they've decided to air minor league hockey, and more (guess what) curling instead of basketball.
i'm living in montreal, which basically has videotron as a monopoly - all i get are TSN and sportsnet-east , and all i get this week are 2 NBA games. Why do I want the bundled crapload of quebecois channels in my cable package? Yes, they even have a remake of paris hilton/ nicole richie's "the simple life" in french with their own montreal "actresses" WITH the exact theme song!
my blog
...the sun goes down. I must have caused it!
I would spend a lot more time watching TV if I could, as there's a few channels I really miss watching in the 2+ years i've gone with no TV service to speak of.
However, I have horrible antenna reception, I can't put up a satellite dish (living in an apartment facing the wrong direction), and Time Warner wants the ridiculous price of something like $50-60 per month for a basic channel package when i'm already paying $44.95 for Roadrunner.
So, until I move or TW decides to stop trying to rape my wallet, the only use my TV will get is purchased DVDs, console games, or stuff downloaded via Bittorrent.
Quite a shame for the cable company - were their prices around the level of most current satellite packages, I probably would have signed up the day I moved in.
but I WANT to be left out of discussions involving the simpsons or survivor.
Unfortunately, most of the broadband connections don't have enough bandwidth for good NTSC video, let alone HDTV.
If the latter, then people are apparently tired of being force-fed by Big Media. If the former, then I guess people are glad to be slaves.
I love to view popup ads all day. With TV, I could only get a commercial every few minutes, but with the Internet, I can get them continuously. Big media, I'm your slave!
YOUR FIRED! - Donald J. Trump
It is my sincere hope that out of the other 80% are watching something like C-Span and staying away from the devil that is the fox news channel. Stations like that are just more the reason we need to get away from TV. Don't get me wrong - I grew up on Married w/ and The Simpsons, but i'm not going to listen to them scream at me that "THE U.N. SUCKS!!"
There is nothing more entertaining than posting at Slashot and then hitting refresh to see how it is modded.
Show me the content, and I'll come back: old Simpsons, old Saturday Night Live, Married With Children, Seinfeld, Futurama, Family Guy.
Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive these days?
If European television is anything like American television, TV's problem may not be so much that the internet is good, but that TV is bad. The number of commercials per hour has increased over the years, and the quality of the programming has often decreased, at least on the networks. It may be that we're reaching a point where viewers are no longer willing to put up with all the commercials and crappy programming, and they're looking for alternatives. HBO and other cable channels have been providing alternatives for some time now, and broadband internet connections may be just one more.
Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive these days?"
No, that's not possible. Rather, the "usefulness of TV" just never was very high.
"I don't want it to be illegal. Therefor, it isn't."
Real life vs Internet
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
The qualities you mention could be summarized as active vs. passive entertainment. While the 'active participation' is one of *the* strengths of the 'net, it can also be a downside. It challenges people intellectually, and while I enjoy that, it can also be tiresome.
When you have infinate choices to make, you need to think about what to choose, continuously. If there's only 20 channels to zap between, just hitting "next" on your remote requires 0 mental effort. Add the low content-vs.-crap ratio of TV, compared with interesting feed-your-brain stuff found on the net. Recently, internet connection to my home was out of order for over a week, and that made it extra noticable how hard it is to find quality content on TV these days.
But sometimes, people just *want* to be passive, and soak in the experience without providing any input. That's why we have cinema's, and why TV still serves a purpose. Choosing between the two, I think I could easily do without TV, but would be very reluctant to give up internet access.
Recent Submissions:
Ask Slashdot: Do you still need a TV? - Rejected
Well, I never thought of TV and the Net strictly competing with each other......
But the internet is vastly more useful in terms of information.
Take the local news for instance. They tantalize you with a tidbit, whatever it may be like "find out how garlic can save your life", and drag you along for the entire show, commercials and all, to learn about that one bit of information.
Most other morning shows, etcetera have their own form of this. The internet, OTOH, has immediate gratification in many cases. Who's the winner gonna be?
Thanks to Bittorrent, I never need to watch my TV anymore. I just download any TV episodes I want to watch through sites like tvtorrents. Ironically, this has increased my viewing of TV related material, but I have hardly any use for the TV except for the DVD player.
Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive these days?
Everything's expansive these days. Why, in my day....
I'm betting on getting back to radios :) I don't own a television.
Television had its time in the limelight, it's now time for the radiostar to strike back. And no, I'm not talking about radio on-demand services (a.k.a. jukebox).
I'm in the process of slowly trying to turn this thing around and take radio back to its roots. The Internet gives me the power to do so.
Bit of off topic advertizing: I'm looking for relay hosts and people interested in making a world-wide uncommercial free music radio station. Ideas, radio voices, news and programs are welcome, since I've already gathered quite a lot of free music to play we are almost set up, only the programming is unfinished (unstarted I'd say).
Anyone interested in collaborating is free to send me a message. The stream is open for testing but please do not overload my server too much before we have enough relays and mirrors. I'm sorry but there is no home page yet. Just the stream.
I hope I don't get modded too badly.
- Voice of Ambience -
Illegal? Maybe. Unethical? HAHAHAHAHAH
The advertisers are paying for the show regardless of when you watch it and how you acquire it. So don't worry: The rich execs you feel so sorry for will still be able to buy their next $3mil yachts.
I love to view popup ads all day.
I use Mozilla products. If a pop-up ad gets through, I switch to another site if I can.
If Internet news is your main source of news, then I suggest that you use Yahoo! News as the starting point of your daily perusal of news. Yahoo! lists only Western news sources, which are usually American. The quality is high. AP (American) and AFP (French) have feeds directly into Yahoo!.
Ever since the day AOL went to unlimited use for $20 a month, I was done with television. I was probably 11 years old then? Even before that, television has not played a major role in my life. I'm sorry, but the programming is just not what I'm looking for in entertainment. In fact, most of it is quite the opposite. I want something that will stimulate my brain, not something that will vegetate it.
:)
I'm now 21 and I have a couple of shows that I like to watch. Family guy, Sopranos( a friend turned me onto this one), and Penn & Teller's Bullshit. That's it.
Everything else comes from the power of the net
You're nothing; like me.
There is good stuff on television, about 0.2% of it. But people on the internet are aware of this tiny sliver of quality, and make it very easy to get. Then I can watch it whenever I want, and without commercials.
The best stuff on television has these elaborate story arcs, making it almost necessary to watch the episodes in the correct order. There are three alternatives for doing this. One is to become a TV slave, dropping whatever you're doing every week at a specific time to catch the airing of the episode. Otherwise, you can wait for the DVD release, which might take years. Or, you can rely on the generosity of the people on the internet and download the episodes from them in the proper order. The last option is by far the most convenient. With BitTorrent and eMule, you just declare what you want, and the shows download much faster than any reasonable person is able to watch them. Can anything compare to this sort of convenience? Well, TV people had better figure something out. In my life, TV programming has become irrelevant, and I have a feeling that more and more people will feel the same way.
Ironically, I feel like this year, I'm in much better touch with what's going on in TV-land. I'm catching up with Six Feet Under, the new Battlestar Galactica, Drawn Together and the Daily Show, all stuff I wasn't watching last year. Funny thing is, last year I had cable. This year, I got rid of it and just hooked up my living room television to my bedroom computer, and set up a pretty slick way to control my computer from my living room with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Now the TV gets watched a whole lot more. How long will it be before many people have this sort of setup? Not long...
What about the janitor?
Secondly stealing is _always_ unethical.
"So instead of getting brain damage from too much Pokemons, Digimons, Barney, and superbowl but actually getting a common culture and involontarily learning a grammatical rule or two..."
...we'll get the people's culture hyperfragmented into tiny online communauties which uses an INBRED grammar! K00L, the joys of teknoh-logi!"
"Too much" is singular and therefore so should "Pokemon" be. Pokemon is a group noun. You've misspelled involuntarily. Your paragraph trails off into the next nonsensical one.
".
"Peoples' " is the proper apostrophe placement for being possessed by all the people. You've misspelled communities. "Communities" is a plural form which requires "use" in place of "uses". Obviously the K00L is a parody so I won't correct it.
"At least the decentralisation will make us as hard to herd as cats when it comes to elections or Windoze. At least it's the tenets of the new relygionn that has catma instead of dogma."
Missing verb. Should be "as hard to herd as cats are." Incorrect clause order: "When it comes to elections or Windoze we will be as hard to herd as cats are." Extra apostrope in "its." "Its" is singular but is being applied to the plural tenets. Religion is spelled incorrectly. Again, tenets is plural, but you've used "has" instead of "have."
I suppose it's vaguely possible this entire thing is intended as a satire of grammar nazis, but it fails on that level as well. The style isn't integrated. It's just tripe.
I havn't owned a tv in over 2 years. Ive found that I can download anything that I would want to watch, and in general it is a higher quality, and in many cases I can get the shows before they air on the west coast anyway.
:-/
TV really has little to offer those with fast internet, but with the recent troubles (#tvtorrents etc) who knows where things will end up
I personally think it is absurd for tv networks to fight the downloading of their shows. If they offered torrents for download (even with commercials) in a timely manner, it would cost them no bandwidth, and their commercials and shows would reach a larger audience.
A more likely explanation is that the only people still watching quality programming like "the salon" on BBC (a reality show where you get to watch the minute by minute workings of an actual hair salon, sometimes shown simultaneously on TWO CHANNELS!) are both too cheap to sign up for sky, and too ignorant to know how to even order broadband, let alone use it. It's another bifurcation of society, those with the intelligence and desire to use the internet, and those who are content to be fed by the continuing flood of mindless blabbering from the telly.
Of course, the new "techno elite" fit conventional print and broadcast media into their daily routines right along with a newfound reliance on portable computing, wireless communication, and high speed internet, but keeping up in any useful fashion with all that is somewhat expensive in both time and money. There is an awful lot of noise to filter through so even the most techno savvy and modern info-geek has to be quite specific in how he spends his time and attention, or he'll get trapped in the clutter and wonder why he's missing all the important things. Like having a life to go with the gadgets and data pipes.
oh yeah? well youre wrong!! so wrong that i cant help but wonder how an inbecil such as yourself is able to use the internet in the first place!!!! its in everyones best interest if you just go away and never return
So, I was in college. Santa Clara University, freshman year, to be precise. I was living in the dorms, had two PC's (a gaming system and a file server), and a 27" TV I had won for possessing some ungodly obscure knowledge about a Pontiac Grand Prix.
The PC's had been in non-stop use through the entire month of February. The TV hadn't been turned on, even once.
A 20 year old college male with zero hours of TV watching in an entire month has been a non-existent demographic for almost forty years. That's when I realized that perhaps things were a little different today.
I'd like to see a graph of Red/Blue county "ratings" for TV vs. Internet. I'd bet that Blue counties favor the Net more than do the Red, in hours spent, as well as growth trends. Internet growth in Red communities will let Red people get around the monopoly old media (newspaper, radio, TV) that feeds them the Republican propaganda that lets them so strongly distrust the direction of the country, the state of the economy, the war in Iraq, yet reelect Bush. Just seeing how diversity of opinion works, and directly communicating with their own people, without their local media corporations kneading their corporate agenda into their worldview. The Soviet Union finally fell apart when pagers, phones and fax machines overwhelmed their centralized lie factories in the 1980s. Even if there's precious little Truth on the Internet, it still might set us free.
--
make install -not war
TV is no "dumber" now than it was twenty years ago. This is just a stupid knee jerk reaction to an industry it is now more fashionable than ever to hate.
Look at the top rated shows and you will find only a sliver of those "reality" shows everyone loves (when they're alone in front of the tv) to hate (the next day around the water cooler). What is there in spades, however, is the cookie cutter crime shows - allegedly "intelligent" content apparently all written by the same crack team of hackneyed high school chemistry dropouts.
Now go back thirty years to 1974 and note the top rated shows. Sanford and Son might be classics now, but no matter how much I loved Redd Foxx I sure wouldn't call it "intelligent." Six Million Dollar man? Fun when I was 12, but in the end only slightly less demeaning in its scientific take than CSI-name-your-favorite-city. It's Charlie's Angels for the geriatric.
Then there was MASH and Bob Newhart and Maude; now there's West Wing and Will and Grace and Family Guy.
Now let's move into the eighties. I'm not even going to bother looking for a link - I can name them off the top of my head: intelligent fare like Three's Company and Dukes of fucking Hazzard and Wonder Woman intermingled with the monthly installments of Battle of the Network T's and A's.
Great shows like those produced by Rod Serling - the MASHs and the West Wings have always been rare on TV. By and large it has always sucked, all that's changing is your own awareness of just how badly. What you're forgetting is it's been that bad all along... you just had no other choice.
I agree with you (even if you are trolling or something, which is always my inital reaction when someone posts AC).
When reading this article on Slashdot, there were a lot of peoplewho said "I can just download the shows from BitTorrent".
I find this worrying.
- Jax
Well, since I'm reading this story on the Internet rather than watching it on TV...
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Through our cable provider, I find that the local free channel is the only thing worth watching -- and only on Saturday nights when MadTV, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits, are aired sequentially from 11PM-2PM. This for me, is the next best thing to porn, atleast, in terms of stimulating entertainment. It's free too!
How about since over the past few years Europe has gotten more and more channels all showing repeats, TV shopping and other crap. Only a couple of subscription only channels who make the money purchase all the decent films leaving nothing for the BBC and friends. New material just rarely happens because there is no money to pay for good writers and actors. Id much rather have less quantity and more quality when it comes to channels.
/DVD player on the TV. How do they account for these people?
So while im sure it is true that TV viewing figures are dropping. Broadband is making it easier to obtain stuff to watch. I download a lot of stuff, burn to cd/dvd and watch it on my DiVX
Maybe the crap on TV is the reason for dropping figures and people are only making use of their Broadband to fill their time in more interesting ways.
I rarely watch TV - The odd film or documentary because quite frankly id rather stimulate my mind than spend my spare time wasting away in front of the TV.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Internet pr0n is generally better than Skinimax pr0n.
So, after CDs and movies, TV is the new victim of this Internet evil machinery ! Sue them ! All of them !
Give the extra $ to the BBC.. That will level the playing field and make it fair.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Some American TV shows have the same kind of delay between their US and UK airing as movies do. Take Enterprise for example - season 4 is already showing in the US (there's been 9 episodes so far) but there's no sign of it on Sky in the UK. Add that to the fact that it's broadcast in HDTV in the US (whereas HDTV doesn't even exist over here and Sky has said it has no plans to start offering it until 2006) and there's a compelling argument for just downloading it instead of waiting months for a lower quality version to come on TV here.
While I agree with you to an extent, I think the overabundance of political views which can be summed up with, "I just put my hand into your pocket like so, and then ..." (The ellipsis being whatever variety of social program, new laws/regulations, etc.)
If more political views were about empowering, about adding rights rather than removing them, then I think more political views would be respected.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Actual real news is in bold. Running total of real news is in italics
1300-1301: Brief summary of headlines 1 minute
1301-1303 : Israel/Palestine/Iraq - new Palestinian PM speaking - he gets 15 seconds on air. 3 minutes
1303-1307 - Commentary/opinion by reporter in Israel. That's 4 minutes solid, compared to the Palestinian PMs 15 seconds. Opinion is NOT news.
1307 - 1307 30 seconds - Ariel Sharon coming back from trip abroad 3 minutes 30 secs
1307 30 secs - 1309 - Iraq. Attack on U.S. soldiers 5 minutes
1309 - Commentary/opinion from reporter in Iraq
1310 for 30 seconds - Blair in parliament justifying himself for not finding WMDs. Old news from archives. NOT news.
1310. 30secs - 1313 - Indonesia, Bali bomber trial. 7 minutes 30 seconds
1313 Adverts , infomercials
1315-1319 "911 the legacy" - reporter commentary, documentary. Not news.
1319 Adverts, informericals
1321-1324 Weather report
1324-1326 Stock markets
1326-1327 WTO Summit , Cancun 8 minutes 30 secs
1327 RIAA sueing 12 year old 9 minutes 30 secs
1328: Teller, creator of H Bomb dies 40 secs 10 minutes 10 secs
1328 40 secs to 1330 Adverts informericals
So, in my half hour snapshot, I estimated that out of 30 minutes broadcast, only 10 minutes 10 seconds was devoted to actual reporting of hard news - my definition of "hard" news is just that - whats going on in a certain place. Weather forecasts and stock market roundups are not included in that definition (for the purposes of this experiment)
Note the amount of reporting on the WTO Summit. This summit had far reaching consequences for the entire planet, yet it gets a meagre 1 minute, and that is tucked right at the end of the 1/2 hour broadcast. (It was THAT WTO summit that Brazil and others walked out on)
Note also, the complete lack of coverage of anything in Europe , despite the fact that I was watching "CNN Europe".
No wonder folks are switching off the TV. If you did the same analysis for Fox, ABC and any of the other big TV stations, you'll probably get similar results. In the UK the one big exception is Channel 4 News.
I mean, finding where the torrents are, waiting for them to finish...while it sounds easy, is actually a lot more work what anyone should ever put forth just to watch "survivor".
downloaders need to get some priorities!!!
It's true that TV was always inane. There's also more good programming now than ever. But it comes at a price, and a steep one at that. A decent cable or satellite subscription, w/o premium channels, costs $50/month in most places. And most of that is crap -- infomercials, celebrity gossip shows, etc. Though you get 70 channels instead of 13, there's no more worth watching than the stuff we got for free back in the 70s. If you want the good stuff, you have to spring for the premium channels, boosting your bill to $70-100, or more.
For me it's just not worth it. I'll get my news from the 'net and the newspaper, my analysis from intelligent magazines (which I can read for free at the library), and my video entertainment from Netflix. If I really start to feel deprived w/o CNN, etc., I'll get satellite radio -- but it hasn't happened yet. After a couple of years w/ no cable, I feel more satisfied with what I'm getting, and better informed. Until I feel flush enough to literally throw away over $100 a month on a super-deluxe satellite/cable package w/ Tivo, it's not worth screwing around with.
Consider that the only thing people used to actually *need* TV for was news and weather information. This they can get much more effectively from the internet, where they can compare a MUCH bigger set of competing viewpoints, search for media files the news organizations won't display, etc... Plus they can read first-hand accounts posted by people while things are happening, without having to put up with the filter applied by network censors.
Then consider that most television is widely accepted to be garbage. I think the term "vast wasteland" was bandied about for a while. Everything on TV that isn't informational or a movie is generally crap, and almost everyone you will ever talk to will tell you this is patently obvious to them, has always been patently obvious...
Finally consider that if we want to watch movies, we can rent them on DVD, so we don't even need television for THAT anymore. And the rise of videogames as a form of entertainment which is INFINITELY more interesting and engaging than the boring, predictable, passive entertainment TV has been killing us with for years. And the fact that TV is infested with annoying, incredibly stupid advertising that takes turns insulting and condescending to us.
The question isn't why people are watching LESS TV. It's why they still watch TV at ALL.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I would guess that CorpGovMedia (the people at the top of the mega corporations, the media and the govt) will pull a "Rendell" on us to keep broadband from ever getting so cheap that it would hurt TV. So they will pass laws that effetively prohibit cheap broadband. BTW, Rendell is the governor of PA who outlawed municipal wifi, thus perpetuating expensive BB there.
The whole corporate power structure and a lot of their profits are based on maintaining ideological hegemony here in America. The main way they do that is via the TeeVee (that and talk radio and the newspaper).
So they are trying to keep broadband more expensive than in Europe, or failing that, make it hard to get full telephone service via broadband.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"May I remind you this is illegal, and unethical" And what about the "ethics" of the corporate media, spouting of the lies of the Bush administration VERBATIM in the run up to war in Iraq, which lead to the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis (according to British Medical Journal, The Lancet). No wonder folks are bit-torrenting TV shows - cos there's damn all "ethics" being shown right now by the U.S. corporate media.
I'm rational. I call it "copyright infringement". It's just not theft. You lose.
Actually, I would be quite happy to cause the downfall of all remaining TV studios. The mass hypnosis of TV is the enemy of rationality.
Loved ones . . . .
I strongly feel that this can be an indication
of the desire for us to have more participation
in what we see and do for our entertainment.
In short, it's about power, companionship,
choices, and being in community.
I can relate to my own experiences the drive me
to this conclusion.
I find that sitting in front of a TV, being fed
stuff totaly at someone else's control, to be
very powerless and alone. I can't say anything
back (being non-interactive). The only thing
that I can do is to turn it off.
Even watching a video tape (rental movie) is
more empowering than broadcast TV. There, I
can choose the movie, when to play it, and when
to have breaks (to eat, go to the bathroom, or
even to think and reflect on what was shown.
On top of that, I am finding that I like to do
things that allow me to be part of the
'entertainment', if you call it.
Here is where the Internet is the winner. Forums
like this one. Email lists. Blogs. These all
allow you and me to be part of the show. We
are not just watching the show.
Off the net, I find that I like to do things that
allow me to be a part more than those that are
passive. For example; I like to do group dancing
more than going to the theatre or opera. A friday
night at a Pagan rap group is far better then one
at a movie or show.
Here is the order in which I enjoy various
life's activities:
1. Being with family / friends at a social
setting
2. Engaged in my hobbies of sewing and glass
art (both alone and in a group_
3. Performing group spiritual activities such
as spiritual dance, singing, and rituals
4. Passively watching a live play/opera/concert
5. Passively watching a movie of my own choosing
6. Passively watching network TV
Cleara
It seems to me that whenever a once-thriving industry starts to decline due to the changing world, the corporations in that industry will do one of two things. 1: See the writing on the wall, realize that eternal success can't be achieved through an antiquated business model, and try to adapt (which is great), or 2: continue stubbornly until ends no longer meet, and then cry "foul play!" and use the courts (or worse yet, lobbyists and legislation) to make up for their lack of innovation.
So far the TV industry has experimented with new technologies and delivery media such as the internet and on-demand delivery to a degree of success, but I get the feeling that if TV as we know it were to truly reach the end of the line, the networks would be very quick to make the shift into category #2. No facts to back that up, just a gut feeling. What do you think?
Yes, this is the television. If someone came up with the idea of TV today, he'd have a hard time trying to find anyone crazy enough to invest in it.
TV is a lowcost AV content distribution system. When compared to internet and P2P (why yes, I'm talking about BitTorrent) distribution, the inadequacies of the current broadcasting scheme become apparent. It is only the huge inertia of the entertainment world money that keeps the system afloat.
Based on publicly available data about TV series budgets and ratings I've calculated the average episode cost per household. For the more popular shows this is around 20 cents, with the 'fringe' shows like Stargate and Enterprise edging slightly higher. None of the shows, however, cost more than a dollar per viewer household per episode.
(This data is based on only US ratings. Imagine how low the cost will sink when we factor in the whole world!)
I'd really like to see a decentralized Internet TV, where the consumers could buy their favourite shows directly from the production houses. New episodes would be delivered as soon as they appear. (Remember to think globally.)
I think you can all immediatly see the benefits. This would put the consumers in control as shows would be produced for them, and not for the broadcasters. All new shows would be available globally instantly. (Existing subtitling and dubbing companies would need to change their operation somewhat.)
The technology should of course be time-shifting. This would free you from having to set your daily schedule to fit the TV schedule. And oh yes: since you'd pay for what you watch, there'd be no ads. (There could be, if you wanted to spare a dime. Even in that case the ads could be tailored to fit you: no more lipstick commercials for single bachelors.)
(The downsides? The broadcasting companies would have to change their business models radically. Cry me a friggin' river, but that's the way it is in the modern world that sees huge technological advances every decade.)
The best thing is that the technologies required for this are already here. BitTorrent, MPEG4 and ADSL (or other broadband technology).
I've tried really hard to find some problems in the scheme. IP and viewership rights are probably the biggest ones. I'd love to see a scheme that would allow me to pay for the episodes only once and then allow me to watch the episode an unlimited number of times. This does have an impact on the DVD sales, but then again, adapt or die.
If anyone of you
[ Antti Rasinen ]
In Stalinist North Korea, broadband clusters your beowulfs with old people using hot grits.
I can't figure out what the Hell brought the 4 characters together.
...
The one guy is just a Jerry Lewis impression.
The women are just annoying.
I can only attribute the show's success to
"Oh look gays. Gays are funny. See I am open minded."
At least it is better than Ellen's "I have issues, and I am going to work them out on national TV" show. You know the show was funny when it was a plain vannilla sitcom, but when it because Ellen's Therapy Half-Hour
I think you lose, since it was cleary bait, and you took it.
Good job it's only copyright infringement then.
And stealing isn't always unethical anyway - the classical steal a loaf of bread to feed starving family thing would indicate that ethics depend on situation.
Stealing physical property may always be unethical. But "stealing" intellectual property is called "copyright infringement", and even the Supreme Court recognizes the difference.
You make a good point here... I've been pretty specific in blaming certain people for causing the extreme polarity in this country... but, I think you're right... I myself read news sites/blogs/slashdot that fit, for the most part, my own worldview... even media sources that a good deal of people view as too liberal, I view as too conservative...
...
Though that's been admitted... I'd guess that I've got a long ways to go before I can stop looking at people with views opposite mine as anything other than "moron, dope, a tool, or a shill"
As a note that supports this claim... during the 1700's when the revolution took place, there were an increasing amount of pamphlets, where some people would get most of their "opinions" from England, and the others from Revolutionists (ie: Common Sense by Thomas Paine for example) Leads me to wonder, if we're about to reach a point where the different sides can't coexist anymore.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
My family is at the point of having the main large TV removed from the house, we have small cheap TVs to catch up on News, and a projection TV for DVD and Movies, but most of our entertainment is computer or organic based, like gardening (why?, what did you think that I meant??)
(NSS=No Shit, Sherlock)
There was an unknown error in the submission.
All of which could have been prevented, had you not decided to become a thieving criminal.
A fine troll. I'll be happy to feed you.
when you watch a show on TV you do so under the agreement to tolerate advertisements which is your form of payment for said product
I'm sorry, where can I view this agreement? My form of payment is my satellite bill. Originally, cable TV was created with NO advertisements. That was the whole point of paying for it. You could have your free TV with your antenna, and commercials... or you could pay for cable and have none. Many people today don't realize this, because they allowed ads to take over cable TV as well, without much resistance.
Think about it. Advertising used to be a way to support content that was either being given out for free (like radio, pre-cable TV), or sold very cheap (like a newspaper). Nowadays, people ignore this and allow advertising to penetrate everything in sight, even with things that are already quite expensive. This overcommercialization of everything is a big problem, but that's another debate entirely.
Now, tell me this. If I'm PAYING for cable/satellite, what exactly is unethical about downloading any shows I want online? Shows that I have legal access to normally anyway? You're actually saying that because I don't view the ads, that I'm somehow "stealing" the programming? This is ridiculous. I could just as easily mute the commercials and ignore them when watching a live broadcast. I could also TIVO the shows and skip the commercials... is that unethical too? Again, I made NO agreement to watch them. I'm paying for a content delivery service, not the production of these shows.
By your reasoning, it's unethical to read a magazine or newspaper and not read every single ad in the publication. This is laughable.
Now, if people are NOT paying for TV in any form, and are still going on the net and downloading shows, maybe you could have an argument then. I still don't think so, though, because TV forces you to buy a large package consisting of many channels you don't want and will never watch, just to get the few channels and programs you DO want. THAT'S unethical. But that's big media as usual...
Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive these days?
Huh? Television is 'useful'? You mean to say that I've actually missed out on something useful in the twenty years since I threw out my last set?!
+++++++
"Look, dear, it's a crazy hairy scary man!"
May I remind you this is illegal
Depends on where you are. Where I live it is perfectly legal to download mp3's,movies, tv-shows etc. as long as it is for personal use.
Not everyone got Maude, either... especially the people who liked All in the Family because they related a little too closely to Archie bunker.
"Right on, Maude!"
And I don't get Family Guy (nor did I like Futurama).
I like Will and Grace. Unfortunately they put them against Survivor and, unlike most of my gay friends, I don't have a tivo. Thank heaven we still get reruns.
I'm writing from an American perspective here, but I like TV. TV has been an important part of my life, a source of entertainment and relaxation as well as information when needed.
After 9/11, the internet collapsed, and no real news was available. Only TV provided reliable coverage, showing the footage, keeping us up to date with what was happening.
A few years ago I was working at home and happened to have the TV news on, and watched live as the Waco compound was stormed by cops, caught on fire and burned to the ground. Nothing afterwards, no tape or reporting, can compare to the impact of watching these events live in real time.
For entertainment, for all the talk about lowest common denominator, I have a genius level IQ and yet I enjoy the same shows that most other Americans do. I like Desperate Housewives and Lost. I like 24 and Alias. I like CSI and Law and Order. I also like science fiction: Enterprise, Tru Calling, Firefly. I enjoy some shows that are at the bottom of the ratings too: Jack and Bobby, Veronica Mars. I even like the reality series. Survivor never disappoints. I've been watching the Biggest Loser and the Branson shows too this season, and I'm waiting for American Idol.
So what does this mean? Well, there's no accounting for taste, but I can't help detecting a tinge of elitism in the many comments from people who don't like TV. I don't see why people are proud to say that the like movies but embarrassed to say that they like TV. A lot of the same people work in both fields. I don't see the quality of movies in general being any higher than those of television shows.
I do understand the objections about commercials, but I've got TiVo. I never watch a commercial I don't want to. And I watch my shows whenever I feel like it, not when they're programmed. TiVo takes an already great medium, TV, and makes it even better. With TiVo, television is the most reliable and least expensive form of entertainment available. I feel very lucky to have it.
I hardly ever have to watch commercials, get all of the TV I want to see and nothing I don't. For my news I turn to the foriegn press. :D
Network advertising executives must hate us.
-Ted
decrease the "usefulness" of current television programming?
Far from being the ulimate teaching/learning tool that it was predicted to be when it started, it has become a never-ending race to the bottom as far as entertainment and educational standards go.
Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say!
In fact, not only did I not watch much tv in the dialup days, I didn't watch much tv after I was about 14.
When I moved to the States, I gave up tv almost altogether due to the quantity and intrusiveness of the ads. No, it's not a superiority thing. No, I don't think tv is "bad" as such. I just don't find an awful lot of value in it.
Now I've moved back home from the US, the only passive medium I use regularly is radio. The reason that radio will still be going once tv falls out of fashion is that despite radio being a passive medium too, you can do other things like drive a car, make the dinner, do some programming, do the laundry etc. whilst listening to the radio. The radio doesn't need your complete attention like something with moving images does. These days I typically listen to BBC Radio 6 for music and BBC Radio 4 for everything else.
Now about radio dramas - they aren't entirely passive. Like a book, they require some imagination. Your imagination can do far better special effects during a radio drama than the wealthiest movie studio can manage. Some people don't see the point in radio drama - but those people generally haven't listened to any.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Gads, if there is anything less useful, less educational, less interesting, less mind-numbingly boring, less least-common-denominator than broadcast television, I sure can't think of it offhand.
Oh, wait. Politics. Urg. Politics on television.
Now I'm going to have to go poke out my minds eye. Thanks a lot, you bastards.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
He in New Zealand, south east of Australia, we have a company called Telecom. Now currently has ad's on TV stating Broadband access but the speed is a crappy 32KB/Sec. Is there an international standard for when internet access is considered 'Broadband'?
Thnx.
That is garbage.
I prefer to sit on my ass in front of the computer, drink a lot of booze, and be on the internet. That way I am in control. Some site displays too many ads, I just go away. I don't click on the damn ads anyway, so who cares. They're wasting their money. Assholes.
If I am properly informed, UK television owners pay a yearly TV "license" for every TV they own.
It only makes sense that some people would turn to free alternatives, ala TV downloaded off the internet. This is compounded by the length of time it takes for some US programming to make it "legally" overseas, and vice versa for those of us in the US.
Oh, and I am not knocking the TV license per se. I understand the reason it exists, even if I object to it in principal.
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
Right on target.
Why? I don't want commercials, period. I have enough ads to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Frankly, I can't wait for those intelligent headsets that act as filters for the real world in blocking ads.
I hate ads, I am sick of ads, I do NOT want to buy Product X, and if you tell me to buy product x, I will SPECIFICALLY buy product Y the next time I need to buy something.
It just can't rid you of responsibility for your free time the way TV does.
....and I still like dial-up better than TV hands down. At least I can control what I can see and think while online. TV just controls your thinking and basically says, "All your programming are belong to us." and I'm not trying to be funny here, either.
Is this really a surprise to anyone? The Internet is making TV less and less interesting by the minute. Broadband is the cataylst to really move the idea of spending more time in front of the computer than the TV mainstream.
The TVAA will now sue the internet.
I watched Buffy religiously (and afterwards went out and bought all the DVDs) and before that it was STNG. These shows were funny, intelligent, thought provoking and (with the exception of the first season of STNG and the deus ex machina-farce that is Season 7 of Buffy) well written.
And what are they trying to feed me now?
Enterprise should be taken out and shot for the good of the francise, CSI: All over is always the same, and don't get me started on things like Fear Factor or Survivor. The least bad is Scrubs (some very tighly written episodes with good dialog) but even that doesn't come close to the well prepared punch of "Once More, With Feeling". The narrative is dead in American television; even watching "Restless" over and over again to figure out the remaining hints is so much more fun than watching some silicon-breasted teenager with no brain puke up mixed worms.
So basically, I turn to books, computer games, and fooling around with friends who blog. There is more Terry Pratchett every year, I expect I'll still be trying to finish NetHack on my deathbed, and there is a whole Internet out there with fun, creative people doing interesting things.
If TV stops being stupid -- bring back Willow! -- I might take another look. Until then, my DVD player is the default setting for the big screen.
There are also to many bad programs behind each other so I just turn the TV off and remind myself to switch on at XX:XX. Except I forget because I am to deep into something else. End result? Even the programs I find worth watching I don't watch anymore. TV really needs to start to worry when I prefer not waking the cat over getting up for the remote.
It's nice to see an Insightful comment from Europe since TFA is about changing European TV-viewing habits. Your frustrating experiences with TV sounds similar to what we're experiencing in the USA, but I think TV can become more appealing to most people (especially in Europe) if networks (like BBC) show more HDTV content and if consumer electronics companies offer lower-cost HDTVs and DVRs.
As an American, I say "especially in Europe" because another BBC News article from September 2004 ("Europe lines up for TV innovation") seems to say that HDTV hardly exists in Europe today. For TV programs, HDTV offers video quality that cannot be downloaded via broadband in a reasonable amount of time. But the "killer app" for HDTV in Europe might be European football (American soccer). In the USA, American football broadcasts in HDTV have convinced many football freaks to buy HDTVs. In Europe, I predict most electronics stores will soon be showing European football demos on their HDTVs in anticipation of the 2006 World Cup.
Another BBC News article from June 2004 ("The digital home takes shape") seems to describe digital video recorders as an "American" technology and not widely used in Europe yet. A few weeks ago, a BBC News aricle about "the death of the VCR" in the UK didn't even mention DVRs as a reason for the VCR's phase-out. DVRs should mostly solve the problem of reminding ourselves and forgetting to watch or record a program. Heck, many DVR owners don't even know when their favourite programs are shown anymore. They just select their show on the DVR and watch, skip, delete, etc.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Ever since the invasion of our free to air stations here in Australia of reality TV, I have found myself more and more drawn to use my computer. Not that I haven't in the past but even with 30+ channels of pay TV I still find myself these days in front of the computer instead of the idiot box.
/. ers if the tripe we get is the best you have to offer. On a side note we get CNN and Fox News on pay TV, how they call those stations news stations has me wondering.
2 main reasons for me, is the total lack of integrity in current affairs, what ever happened to having your own point of view. And secondly the absolute trivia that gets passed of as programming, especially reality TV shows, I especially feel for Americian
" Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive these days?"
More likely it's that the internet has finally become more entertaining that television.
With broadband and faster cpus you can finally enjoy streaming content from a wider variety of sources than is available in the very small selection of channels that is TV.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
" Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased..."
No, I don't think that's possible.
half of it (if not more) is made of US-provided translated sitcoms!
I see it with my kid's friends: whenever the "dumbox" is turned on, the kids are magnetized.
So when an overworked, underslept parent hears the screams of boardom they just turn the TV on just to get some rest.
IANAP[arent], so it's easy for me to comment, but it does seem to me like selling (a bit of) the kid's future for some instant gratification.
Working for necessity's mother.
Point to point transfers are a very poor use of bandwidth compared to broadcasting. Everyone in your block can receive a TV show and it only uses 6MHz of bandwidth for realtime transfer.
You fail to understand the technology of RF data transmission. If you did, you'd see why things are the way they are.
the ability to distribute new content.
its great to be able to search, find and download tv episodes that you know are good.
But few people i know would waste their time downloading a tv show they never heard about or search for music theyve never heard of.
When you switch on the tv it brings you the content thats on, you decide if its good or not. The internet brings you what you want, but only that.
Tv also brings you instant content, the internet does not(not including text media). This is why i like tv channels that show one type of content like weather channels, music channels or news channels.
Tv still does a better job of distributing uknown content than the internet.
I found that as I have grown in the years, (I am within months of being over the hill... 30) I tend to find shows with low quality humor in place for shock value boring. I also tend to find that altogether, there are 7 viewing-worthy shows on each week since most TV hours are filled up with either reality TV or glorified infomercials (such as extreme makeover).
What's with reality TV. I think Big Brother being thes best example. A person reaches a point in their lives that they are so glued to the couch that they find it entertaining watching 10 people that can manage to actually find 100 days of their lives to do something like this are forced to live without a TV during that time. Let's face it, the definition of reality TV is "What would a loser like you do if you just turned off the F-ING TV for once?"
MTV has taken a serious hit in quality since sometime in the early 90's when music with lyrics worth printing in the CD cover was replaced by a long series of mumbling to the beat talking about thinks like "Popp'n a cap in dabruders azz".
CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and even USA local broadcasts from BBC might as well have a huge American flag being held by a rambo-looking soldier and a model. There is almost no newsworthy content left.
Discovery tends to play unlimited reruns of documentaries narrated by people who all auditioned to be the next Robin Leech but failed and took on a narrator for Discovery Channel instead.
Cartoon Network and Nickelodian haven't modernized in ages and programming produced by Cartoon Network is typically low quality at best. For example, powder puff girls look like they're animated by teenagers in an art class.
Nick at night is not real intersting anymore since almost all the shows worth watching have been played to death. Watching the same 20 episodes of My Favorite Martian for 15 years is just not good enough.
USA doesn't even get quality low budget movies anymore. I mean you never see Christian Slayter, John Cusack or even Gilbert Goodfried anymore.
Fox has reached a low, it's gotten to the point where you can't even turn it on anymore. Almost all Fox programming is focusing a the majority of the US population. Basically al the shows are focused on people incapable of understanding an intelligent joke so they make the jokes as cheap and crude as possible that anyone who actually can read the parts of the newspaper that are neither drawn or about sports can not possibly tolerate the stupidity. It is so rare that I can find anything on Fox which has any level of humor above juvenile. Let's face it, it's not far off from just having a bunch of people sitting around, one farts and then everyone laughs about it and starts making fart jokes.
These days, I've switched to maybe 4.5 hours of TV viewing a week. I buy a ton of DVD's... I currently have about 350 of them, I guess I watch 1-2 a week. Most of the time, I find entertainment learning to build furniture, playing with my children, reading books. I like to read at least 100 pages a day. It's a lot like how a gym freak likes to make it through the track twice each day.
So I would like to imaging that the statistic is just saying "A bunch of people are having a hard time choking down the crap on TV and have found a good way to spend their time doing something to better themselves".
The problem with TV is not a lack of programming I want to watch. The problem is that I don't have time to waste bending to network time slots. For instance, I am a Trekie at heart. No matter how bad the Star Trek of the year is, I will gladly spend an hour watching it if I can. With Netflixs I happily found the time to watch Deep Space 9 from start to finish in order. It is something I would have done a long time ago if I had had the ability. I would like to watch Enterprise. The problem is that my life is just too damn busy to sit down for a regular time slot, and if I had my choice I would watch start at first episode and watch them all in order. When I new one came out, I would happily watch it. I don't care if it has commercials. I can stomach some commercials to watch something I like. I just can't stomach being stuck to a networks time slot.
Why in the hell there is no cable service that is purely on demand programming is completely beyond me. I simply don't see what networks have to lose. They can keep the commercials in. Hell, they could charge advertisers for each house hold that watches their commercial instead of just guessing. They could collect a few cents each time a person watches the Old Spice commercial while watching friends. Advertisers would be happy because they know more about how many households are really watching their adds, networks are happy because they can charge more for the improved advertising data, and cable companies can merrily skim off the top.
I honestly don't see why networks have dug their heels in so deeply and cling so tightly to their old marketing model when there clearly is a new way. Personally, I will not lose much sleep over this. I see it two ways. Either networks and cable companies get their shit together and realize that people want EVERYTHING on demand and accommodate them, or they continue to slip in the market place.
Call me American, but nothing brings a smile to my face like seeing companies get battered in the market place for ignoring the demands of their customer while other companies notice the changing tides and cash in.
everything has downsides. my internet connection sometimes keeps me from having time for family and so on.... BUT: my connection to the biggest as well as most powerful information network in the world has given me a lot. as tv being a better thing in terms of "watching it togehter" i doubt that it makes sense... i prefer to have a discussion with my brother -IN FRONT OF MY PC- like when i see a nice article about those underwater robotic-measuring probes. i call for him, we discuss it and share this special-optimistic-trekkie-feeling for the future... i love my stuff that matters! and for things that dont matter in general i am still able to choose quite easily -click- gamespot.com -click- ^__^
... star trek, due south or futurama can still call me back to tv as i am one of those 50hz(in europe that is) crt video-gaming (60hz ;D) couch potatoes.
;D.
:)
but as mentioned above
anyone outside of austria loves due south too?
i love my cable provider for giving me the opportunity of having the best valued offer of a broadband cable connection! my 33.600 baud modem but had the same "magic" to it, it just was a "little" slower
so we still have to thank microsoft for having "their homework" done... without their capitalistic (but still somehow more enthusiastic) attitude broadband wouldnt be so cheap and the internet wouldnt be that popular. i am grateful for that even if its not that fair as many might be thinking....but the market regulates itself. if they continue to show up with crappy security everyone not just me will at least have one pc installed with some free/licensed unix based alternatives and ipodders will switch to macs....
but dont blame them too much, they really brought us here (ok sorry cisco!).. thanks for that.
Of course this is nothing to do with the fact that alot of TV isn't worth watching these days, it being made up a reality TV or house make-over programs...
In the US, digital TV is the same as high definition TV (HDTV). This is not the case in Europe, where digital TV is mainly standard definition. (European HDTV broadcasts can be counted on the fingers of one hand.)
The advantage of going digital this way is mainly that you can squeeze four digital broadcasts in the same frequency spectrum where formerly you could put only a single analogue channel. This way, you open up the market for more broadcasters, more programming, more competition.
The US HDTV model allows a small number - say, three - HDTV broadcasters to use up so much of the available spectrum you effectively shut off market entry for newcomers. This would not be acceptable over here.
As far as DVR's are concerned: the linux vdr project http://www.linvdr.org/ is alive and well; however most websites about this project seem to be in German or French, some Finnish. Commercial DVR's exist, eg. Sky TV's "Sky Plus"; but their features seem unappealing when compared to the linux software.
Every product eventually evolves to cutting out any middleman who provides marginal added value.
Such is now the case with TV since every show hits the internet an hour after broadcast. Isn't it time the TV 'middleman' is relegated to obscurity ?
Watch DVDs then...
- Jax
I think that will happen sooner than you think.
By 2010, you will see large-scale rollouts of optical-fiber to home Internet connections, where download speeds could reach the point you will need gigabit Ethernet adapters because the download speeds could well exceed 100 megabits per second. At these speeds, you will be able to watch multiple TV streams at broadcast quality AND surf the Internet at speeds that will make today's broadband look slow, and it will be the beginning of the arrival of true view on demand TV as instead of waiting for seeing the program at a pre-determined time schedule you just download the program(s) you want to your local computer or media server machine.
I have 3 kids under the age of 7 and found that the advertising on TV was really effecting my children. Our family is very active physically, but our kids have had a fixation with junk food. About a year ago we moved to a new house and decided to put away the TV at the same time. Since then, our kids are not as pudgy, and they no longer beg for junk food all day long. It only took them about 3 days to adjust to life without TV. It was much harder for us to deal with it, but we are getting used to it now.
We get all our news either from newspapers or the internet. My kids use the internet for all their entertainment. We still watch videos/DVDs for movies, etc. With all the crappy content on TV (aka reality TV) I don't really think we are missing much.
With the internet, I feel that I have at least some control over the content that my children are exposed too. I expect that the The Culture of Marketing,the Marketing of Culture is enough to frighten any parent about the dark side of advertising and content on TV today.
Actually, I put a TV Tuner in my PC and now I can do both.