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TV Isn't Broken, So Why Fix It?
PolygamousRanchKid sends this quote from a contentious article at CNN that questions the need for further development of TVs and the entire TV-viewing experience.
"The technology industry is absolutely bent on reinventing television. ... But nobody seems to be able to answer the big question: what exactly is so broken about TV anyway? The tech industry is filled with engineers and geeks. They naturally want to optimize the TV experience, to make it as efficient and elegant as possible, requiring the fewest number of steps to complete a particular task while offering the greatest number of amazing new features. But normal people don't think about TV that way. TV is passive. The last thing we want to do is work at it. ... As long as there's something on — anything — that is reasonably engaging, we're cool. Most of us are even OK spending a few minutes just shuffling through channels at random."
So, what do you think is broken about TV right now? Is there a point at which it'd be better for us to stand back and say "We've done what we can with this. Let's work on something else"?
Remember when History had history programming?
Of course history had two dimensions: Confederate armies and Hitler. Oh! Three dimensions, if you count "historical Jesus" shows during Christmas and Easter seasons.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
My name is Otto and I love to get blotto
and not one of them carries college level lectures?
<cough>Khan Academy<cough>
Basically, broadcast TV is for old people now. Young people don't even buy cable anymore.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The Open University is a distance-learning university in the UK. They used to broadcast material (not just lectures) overnight on BBC 2, but it seems they stopped this a few years ago. Shame.
Some of it might be here, or else that might be the new "general audience" stuff.
The OU website says "Virtual microscopes, interactive laboratories and online collaborations have taken the place of home experiment kits sent through the post, while late night TV programmes have been replaced by DVDs and online videos".
Cable's not worth it any more.
Seriously. I have something north of 500 tunable channels, maybe 1000, and there are times there isn't one watchable thing on any of them because hundreds are showing infomercials and Everybody Loves Raymond reruns.
And it makes perfect sense to the businesses that feed the cable company content.
That's the world that your local business school wants us to live in.