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YouTube, Gaming and Social Networking Busting TV's Chops
splitenz writes "A TV executive told a major Australian broadband conference that television audiences are slipping away into social media, gaming and other online subscription spaces. YouTube and online gaming is taking the traditional TV audience online and TV is struggling to fight back."
I still watch lots of TV. Netflix and Youtube give me hours of entertainment for a grand total of $30/month. ($20 for internet, $10 for netflix). This particular gravy train probably won't continue forever, but it sure is nice.
Adapt or die. Nuff Said.
Seriously - anyone else would have blamed piracy and people downloading episodes from countries that played the shows 6 months ago...
If there was some generational effect going on (the article does note that the elderly watch more than the average) it would be somewhat mitigated by the Economist's finding that
US numbers show a similar trend -
Those who are interested should check out the American Time Use Survey - it has some rather interesting content (for instance: 15 to 19 read for an average of 5 minutes per weekend day while spending 1.0 hour playing games or using a computer for leisure. )
Taking the two pieces together it would seem we're watching more TV in general, and when we're online we have the TV on anyway. Hardly seems worth pounding the drums of the apocalypse over.
People aren't happy with passive entertainment like they once were. They want to be engaged.
Some good TV shows can do that, but most of them do not.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
If they actually WERE serious about competing, they would make TV easy to watch on the viewer's terms. But they fight every attempt of that happening by continuously putting blocks between the customer and the shows.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Star Trek:TNG - "The Neutral Zone"
SONNY Yeah, boob-tube... you know. I'd like to find out how the Braves are doin' after all this time. Probably still finding ways to lose.
DATA (to Riker) Oh -- I think he means television, sir.
SONNY Or maybe catch up on the soaps.
DATA (to Sonny) That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year Two Thousand Forty.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
To put it in perspective, Australian TV has been racing to the bottom for as far back as I can remember. Basically we copy US (and often UK) shows with our own versions but with only half the budget and effort. If one station lands onto a 'hit', the other commercial stations will pour every spare cent into copying that concept themselves, so you end up with mulitple stations broadcasting the same show. Yet at the same time most of the acclaimed US/UK shows they get the rights to get buried on timeslots that have no real chance to get an audience (last I bothered to check stuff like 30 Rock runs at 11.30pm and I've never seen it advertised). Somewhere between laziness and fear-of-being-different Australian TV has snookered itself focussing mainly on the flash-in-the-pan stuff to get the viewers and hope that another concept will be ready to go before the audience hits their burnout on the last one.
And the money just isn't there either; any time an actor becomes successful enough they can start hitting their stride, it's their time to flee overseas - which they have to in order to get a decent paycheck and enough work to make a career. Our Govt run networks - the ABC (and as well SBS) - are the only ones starting to make significant strides out of them all (despite lousy funding, they're the ones with the best online pressence and producing the best local work).
People certainly are still watching TV, just not on a station anymore. Due to the crappy scheduling of popular shows the DVD market seems to be making a killing - just from talking to people over the years no-one wants to chase a show on the 10.30pm timeslot over the course of half a year ("Oh, it's a repeat tonight, would have been nice to know before it starts") they'll just wait and watch the DVD (buy it themselves, buy it overseas, or just borrow it from someone else in the same boat).
I'm sorry, but televisions content is just plain garbage. Each channel has, at most 2 good shows for the entire week. AMC seems to be the only channel putting out quality TV now... that should make the big name broadcasters ashamed of themselves. When I got to work people talk about Madmen, the walking dead, breaking bad... no one has any idea what's on CBS/NBC/ABC anymore because it's worthless trash. Usually if I accidentally switch to one of those networks for any period of time I'm so disgusted with whatever reality garbage they've throw on the screen I'm actually ashamed of the society I belong to.
So, it's video that you can't pause, rewind or fast forward. You can only watch it on certain kinds of not-very-portable devices. You can't choose when you get to watch what you want to watch. Periodically, whatever you're watching will be interrupted by some bullshit you don't want to watch (which, remember, you can't fast forward past). And you get to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of enjoying this wonderful new medium. Why would anybody be choosing not to watch television?
cable co will fight back with lower caps
Personally, I am going to blame the messenger, i.e. Nielsen. Shows that trend towards tech savvy types will always struggle and die if the only emphasis is going to be on boxes that measure appointment viewing. I don’t have a box, so I don’t matter. If I don’t matter, why subject myself to appointment viewing commercials ALONG with the obvious product placement?
If modern HD TVs are are just another computer screen, what is in store for appointment viewing as we undergo generational attrition?
For me, modern television is going through the same death spiral that modern commercial music is going through. My music interests have gone entirely independent of the big music labels because of the crap they pull and produce. The more they dumb down, the less of my attention they get. Viewing numbers will distribute across the hundreds of channels of reality programming and the few die hards will congregate around the few bright spots of fictional storytelling while they last. (You should prepare for vastly smaller seasons of shows, like the British models.)
I don’t matter, so why even try to make it through these endless show hiatuses that kill anything serialized? Why endlessly pine and dread if the uncounted just don’t matter?
Screw off Nielsen. Take your appointment viewing system and burn in hell for killing too many of my loved ones. I for one am finding it too painful to play with your stacked deck.
but only in the internet
this whole thing is about online TV (winners) vs. offline TV (losers)
Our DirecTV bill is somewhere around $130/mo and that's not including any premium channels except starz. Why pay for satellite when I can just as easily watch it on the network's website for free with commercials, or pay less than $20/mo to watch it on Netflix commercial free? Plus I can pause/rewind them for free without having to pay extra for DVR service. Not to mention you can watch it whenever you want, which is a big deal nowadays.
On another note, those numbers can't be that accurate. A LOT of Americans will have the TV on while on the computer, cleaning, cooking, sleeping, or even not at home. I bet the number is a lot less for those that actually sit down and do nothing but watch TV.
If traditional television is dying it's because they have done next to nothing to innovate, and when they do they charge an arm and a leg for it. I really wish TV companies would just give up trying to provide the means of transportation (satellite/cable) and just team up with ISPs to offer fiber to the home... too bad that'll likely never happen. New companies will emerge and the old ones will just die.
Holy cow does this mean that Spock's comment from ST-TOS will turn out to be true. "television-- That form of entertainment didn't last much past the mid 21'st century". :)
I bet they lobby government to ban network bandwidth and then argue that they are entitled to a profit. In fantasy land, all TV's going forward should be net-linked and ALL cableTV lines across the country converted to extra internet bandwidth. Also after they collapse anyways, I bet they demand a bailout.
They fail to mention that TV here in Australia sucks real bad. It is so far behind the rest of the world.
shush shush
go to sleep now
you messed up the news and created predictable, pathetic, mind-numb, formulaic content bereft of artistic value
but that's okay. you didn't have much choice on that silly broadcast-only medium
now it's time to rest. stop squirming in your box
shush, shush
go to sleep
If I could buy the 5 channels we watched for a reasonable price I'd bite. But we don't watch enough TV to justify the $60 a month they want for them. And they only put those 5 channels in the upper packages, not the cheap ones. 2-3 years cable free, not missing it that much.
Yes, that's the problem, fighting back. If they had any sense, they would be one of these strange new media beasts who are talking all the limelight, (and money).
Aside from the repeated advertisements and the poor quality of basic cable shows, the main reason i don't watch TV is because i don't get to watch my shows and series i like whenever i want. By having Netflix, Hulu or some sort of DVR system to record shows, we can watch what we want when we want. Some TV station offers some shows online after its been aired, but again the choices of shows is very limited. Add to this the control over time consuming commercials, interactivity, live chats, and all that the internet can offer and there's very little reason to pay for both a TV cable service and an Internet Service Provider. Another argument against Cable TV is the lack of objectivity some news channel have; We are now in the era of bloggers, tweets and independent journalism. People want to retake control of their sources of entertainment and information.
Cricket highlights
The BBC, yesterday. One side showing "the wedding". The only way I watch that if they made it interactive and I could enact my republican fantasies. Once thing about the French, they know how to deal with royalty. Russians too. Nice job guys, want to helps the rest of the world out?
The other side, snooker. The most boring thing ever to be televised apart from hurdling. That is it! On a friday! Prime time TV? Must watch TV? Not on the beeb.
Have I Got News For You is still funny although this weeks episode seems to have been cancelled and the previous one was more about "The wedding" then the middle east being on fire. Gosh they have plenty to say if Israel defends itself by killing a single muslim in a week but if muslims kill hundreds of muslims that is apparently not fit to discuss in a satirical news program. Am I so wrong in finding it all funny?
The rest of the time, cooking shows. Now don't get me wrong. I like food and I am actually quite good as a cook but how many master chefs can one stomach? According to the BBC dual and even triple episodes in a row.
Okay, so to discovery, geographic channel and animal planet. If anyone in America is bored, then you please go and shoot that mexican dog licker? My god that show is on 24/7. If I want to train a bad dog I kill its owner, then eat the dog. Just because a single program does well does NOT make it a good idea to replace your entire schedule with it. Diversity, it is the spice of live. For instance I would like some cat sprinkled on my chow.
Discovery? Come on, Cake Boss? Are you serious? And you thought American Chopper was gaying it up as much as possible. (come on and entire show with butch men in leather making shiny stuff). I get tired of the same formula. "Oh shit, we are running out of time, yet again, we do so every single time but never learn to start a bike, cake build a tiny bit earlier because thatwould deprive us of fake tension only the most gullible would believe". Even if some of the programs are interesting, the commercials kill it. Not just to long, to loud and to stupid, they repeat the same ones over and over in the same show AND then run ads for the very show I am trying to watch. That is like ordering a burger and then being told about that very burger instead of serving it.
Comedy Central? Thank you, I seen the Simpsons a dozen times over and Family Guy and such are simply not funny to anyone who isn't 12.
There is simply nothing to watch. Now I don't hate TV, I am as ready as the next guy to sit in front of the idiot tube after a day at work and let my mind rot. I like it, just there is absolutely nothing on or if it is it gets interrupted by a 5 minute commercial block. That causes me to look away and when I look back, the NEXT commercial block is on.
Instead, I simply download the few things I want to see (since I am in europe often the entire season is available already by the time I hear about it) and watch them in HD with no commercials blocks and no re-scheduling because some jack-booting asshole wants to get married to a slut.
TV has a problem. People like mindless entertainment but for millenia they had to create it themselves. Once every household had a musical instrument because that was the only thing to do at in the evening hours. Theathers were everywhere filled with crap actors for when people got fed up with the same song every day. Then movies came and made entertainment for the masses for the first time. TV made it even easier, just pump a production straight into everyones home. The perfect way to spend those hours between work and going to bed. Don't deny it and claim you read a book, statistics prove you didn't.
But that was in the days when we had no choice. Either you watched it on the TV stations terms or you didn't. And because they controlled us (don't deny it, I seen the empty streets when something special happened in TV land) they thought they would always control us and added longer and longer commericial blocks, now even showing ads over the programs
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Aussie FTA TV has far too much junk on it these days.
We get old shows that have been aired so many times the tapes have worn out (Bewitched, I Dream Of Jeanie, The Flintstones, JAG, McGuiver, Everybody Loves Raymond, Cheers, The Brady Bunch, Seinfeld, MASH, The Nanny, 2&1/2 men and others) and worse still they play the same subset of the series over and over and over again instead of playing all the episodes that exist.
We get crappy reality TV like Farmer Wants A Wife, Masterchef, Junior Masterchef, So You Think You Can Dance, Next Top Model, Survivor, Australia's Got Talent, My Kitchen Rules, Dancing With The Stars, The Block and The Biggest Looser.
We get so-called "morning shows" that are basically just vehicles to run large numbers of infomercials for useless overpriced crap. (anyone who thinks they can get fit or "loose those love handles" by spending 5 minutes a day going around in circles on the "Ab Circle Pro" needs their head examined)
Where we DO get new shows, they are usually aired 6 months behind the rest of the world. Or where they DO "fast track" them and they start playing them soon after the US, they get axed after a few episodes or something comes up (school holidays, long weekend, Easter, sport on the same channel, sport on another channel, a special event or some other lame excuse) and it gets delayed a week or 2 and eventually its months behind again.
"A radio executive told a major conference that radio audiences are slipping away into TV. Soap operas and recent news footage are taking the traditional radio audience and radio is struggling to fight back."
it airs the "new" US shows from 6-18 months behind their release dates in the US
That might be because Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, whose climate is 6 months behind that of Europe and North America. If the weather seasons are 6 months behind, why shouldn't the TV seasons be?
Network TV can die in a fire. Even the vanishingly small number of decent shows (I could count the number on one hand after a brutal industrial accident) consist of 30% commercial time. And the fire network TV dies in can be stoked by the former network executives.
Speaking of ads, TFA has a large intrusive bold text ad right in the middle of the story, which means I'll soon be getting my FAs here like everyone else: secondhand hearsay.
I haven't watched very much TV for years now, and anything I watch on a television screen tends to be from Netflix.
I considered that when writing my previous comment, but then I realized that if Australia were so far ahead, an Australian studio instead of a US or UK based studio would have produced the show and then sent it to the North on a six-month tape delay.
Hmm.
I don't watch any "TV". I haven't had a "TV" for seven years.
However, I do watch a nice chunk of Hulu, because you can stack 3 episodes and watch them in a bloc on a random Thursday at 10PM. I wouldn't call House, Fairly Legal, or The Chicago Code "stupid". Every writer knows that scripts are "Hollywood-ized", so be it. But those are passably intelligent shows.
You can vote down (or up) ads on Hulu, so presumably if you downvote the Washing Machine ads some five times, they eventually go away. I try to vote up the Audible.com ads because I want to see who else is doing Audio Books, but nothing showed up yet.
But yes, I agree, your average '80's show won't cut it anymore.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
FIREFLY
So, it's video that you can't pause, rewind or fast forward.
TiVo DVRs can pause and rewind TV. As for fast forward, TV is good for the kind of thing that's impossible to fast forward because it's being broadcast within a minute after it happens: news and sports.
why even try to make it through these endless show hiatuses that kill anything serialized?
Game shows broadcast live, such as Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Hockey League, and National Basketball Association, draw appointment viewers despite their annual hiatuses.
fictional storytelling
I switched away from FOX News Channel because I was tired of the fictional storytelling, but political news shows like MSNBC's Morning Joe Brewed by Starbucks still draw viewers.
I imagine a 10000 mile roll of tape going from Australia to New York, traveling at a constant speed of about 1m/s. That's rather fast for tape, too. You could probably fit High Definition video feeds on there.
Earlier we had an article here about the closing of the last typewritter factor. Some techs are just obsolete and need to be phased out. TV seems to be one of them. They are idiots of course in the entertain industry as we all know and will hang on by their teeth if they must as long as they can. Eventually we will close the door on the last TV manufacturing department in the world, and even then, they will still fight to survive. TV is dead because it failed to meet the needs of the people. Programming is completely rehashed over an over again. You can only tell the story of "boy meets girl" so many times before it become monotonous and people stop paying attention. TV plots are shallow and seldom draw people in. Youtube and Netflix offer the user variety they can select from that no TV broadcaster can compete with. An attempt was made by Thompson Sun Interactive in the 90's to add a level of interactivity to satellite and cable boxes but no one adopted it. Its this fear of change that will kill them, just as its doing to the movie and music industries.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
You might want to work on that
Ima Strain and eye wotch tele lots - Not. Fuck Australian TV producers are money sponging bullshit artists who whore anything for a $. Consider the "Neighbours" TV program., two of the producers for the program were fired, not for being junkies, but for being junkies with outrageous smack habits that were way out of control; and the script writer was busted with his pants around his ankles paying some 14yo boy to suck his cock.... and the cops kicked in the flat door mid blow job.
.
Late night TV is or has been fucking shitful amounts of late night mobile phone stripper adds, and repeats of the same adds like 5 times in a row and then after 5 minutes of that crap, they sling the TV show and it's extremely dwindling fan base, back to 5 minutes of show and the same fucking adds.
.
Fuck me... whehalf the country was flooding in January, they ran 24 /7 coverage of the flooding on more or less all channels, and it was the same fucking coverage all day and all night and wall to wall idiot fucking add libbing, and every hour or so, the news would get up dated with a new street name, that has another centimeter rise in flood depth... as I sat there waist deep in flood water flowing through my home.
.
The last thing I want to watch when my home is being flooded, and I am sitting for a meal break, is to see nothing but 24/7 news containing nothing but flooding and and the stupid fucking incessant "can't say something, say anything" shit bag journalism. After the flooding went down, I gave my TV away.
.
To be fair, not every journalist is a stupid arse licking fuck, and not every TV program is "shit for brains" melodrama's or re-runs of reruns of reruns; but alot of it is political // corporate arselicking crap, and most of the journalists are fucking dickheads, and most of the TV programs is compost for growing couch potatoes...
.
As far as the "ME TOO" cloning of the crap that comes from the USA... fuck that. From a nation that is run by corporations and the terds that like that environment, and has 5% of the worlds population but consumes 2/3rds of the worlds anti-psychotic drugs... it says plenty. Each kid sees something like half a million murders on TV.... etc., etc., etc., fuck Australian TV.
You should look up Triple J (Australian radio). It is run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (state funded) and they actively support and promote new and upcoming bands. They don't have ads as they are publicly funded and they promote and have input into music festivals, even having competitions to get unknown bands playing at some larger Australian festivals.
I am being introduced to new music by listening to this station all the time.
Sorry. anybody know add youtube movies as site http://www.itvmore.com/2011/04/watch-tom-and-jerry-cartoons-recorded.html thanks.
Search engine marketing is the process of ensuring your website ranks prominently within search engine listings when a topic relevant to the content on your website is looked up on a search engine Ignitees refer to SEM as direct marketing on steroids http://www.ignitee.com/sem.php
I've never heard of cable TV for $7-8 above your internet bill.
Cable operators such as Comcast offer a "limited basic" or "lifeline" package, which includes local channels, public access, home shopping, and little else, for about $20 per month. The discount off the cable Internet access bill for also having TV is also about $20 per month: roughly $45 per month on the same bill as cable TV or $65 per month otherwise. So even if you have a good antenna, it's like getting the public access channels for free. The next step up ("digital starter") includes ESPN and MSNBC, which brings me to the next point:
Spectator sports are a waste of time.
Even if you personally believe this, saying such in some households would be tantamount to trolling. And are live news talk shows such as those on MSNBC or Bloomberg likewise a waste of time?
Public access? Why do I care?
Even if you don't care, somebody else does, especially for people whose favorite soap opera is C-SPAN.
Maybe those people (it's not whole households who believe otherwise, it's just one mentally-ill male who bullies everyone else in the household) should go get psychiatric treatment for their sports addiction.
In order to want treatment, a viewer will have to see why his addiction is harmful, and that will include understanding exactly why NFL football, NHL hockey, and other spectator sports are a waste of time. Have you any resources about this so that I can help my sports fan relative?
You can see a lot of live news shows online just by going to cnn.com etc. You don't need TV for that, just a web browser
Which requires a computer on which to run a web browser. Most home users aren't willing to run an HDMI cable all the way from the TV to the computer desk. In fact, all three of my test subjects still use either an SDTV or an HDTV made before HDMI became common. And all of them prefer a Comcast cable box's user interface to the unfamiliar (to them) user interface of online video, which is designed for a desk rather than a handheld infrared remote control.
For another thing, how many PCs can be set to "cnn.com etc." at once? Another of my relatives, the same one who watches C-SPAN, is a devout fan of Morning Joe on MSNBC in the morning. She tunes cable boxes in three different rooms (bedroom, living room, den) to MSNBC and plugs an FM transmitter into one of the cable boxes so that she can blast Morning Joe on the radio in every other room of the house where she does various tasks to get ready for work.
If someone wants to spend $20-40 / month just to watch public-access channels, that's their right
Perhaps my point missed you. Due to the pricing structure of cable Internet, the "lifeline" TV is free with the subscription to Internet because the monthly discount for bundling TV with Internet balances out the monthly price of "lifeline" TV.
if you had to choose between getting all your current TV/movie needs met for free or $7/month with Netflix over the internet, but it wouldn't include the public access channels, would you choose internet/Netflix for $7 or would you choose to subscribe to Cable TV just to keep access to public-access channels?
Option 1: $65 per month for Internet without TV and $8 per month for Netflix.
Option 2: $20 per month for public access channels, $45 per month for Internet with the TV subscribers' discount, and $8 per month for Netflix.
Either way is $73 per month plus taxes and franchise fees.
My Blu-Ray player lets me watch YouTube from the comfort of my sofa
C-SPAN.org also streams online. But watching online video still requires either a home theater PC, a BD player, or an online video streaming appliance, and neither of the two households in my sample has one of those.
The problem with sports fans is that can't just be happy watching a game once in a while, or even once a week
Even once a week costs money for cable TV if the local networks in your area happen not to carry your favorite team's games.
And suggestions of just recording it for later are poo-pooed as if it makes a difference to watch it live or not.
Watching live does make a difference. Are you familiar with the concept of a spoiler? One's co-workers will likely be discussing Sunday night's game on Monday morning at work, and knowing the outcome in advance will spoil the drama of the game. But I'd love to hear a convincing argument that spoilers don't exist. Besides, even recording it for later requires a subscription to cable TV with DVR service.
If you can plug an FM transmitter into a cable box's audio jack, you can certainly do the same thing with a PC or notebook.
First, this test subject is unwilling to learn how to navigate a video web site. Every time I offer to show her around, she says "I'm not doing it right now; let me go do $chore". She prefers the user interface of a cable box in which power, volume, and channel number are the only things to worry about. She told me that she doesn't even want to explore free on-demand videos for fear that she might accidentally choose a pay-per-view selection.
Second, unlike C-SPAN.org, MSNBC.com appears to offer no live stream, only clips. I haven't worked in detail with this particular site's user interface, but a lot of similar sites require user intervention to proceed to the next clip in sequence.
Third, the PC's monitor is only 17" diagonal viewable image size, and she likes to be able to see it across the room in multiple rooms as she gets ready for work in the morning. As you point out, this will change as legacy SDTVs break and get replaced with HDTVs and as BD players hit the $100 mark.
Fourth, the test subject shares the family PC with another member of the household, and when she takes a shower, the dings and chimes of the PC's user interface distract from the words being said.