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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
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.
> when you've got multiple monitors and a tuner card?
I think turning your computer into a TV still counts towards television usage.
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
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.
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.
Unless you count "relaxing" for six hours a day to be an accomplishment.
You'll understand when you get older, son.
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.
TV needs an adblock extension to be useful again.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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...
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...
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.