I haven’t seen a television commercial in nearly two years.  That may be a bit of an exaggeration once in awhile we are eating in a restaurant that has tvs or I will be at my parents house and someone will have the tv on and I will catch a commercial.  I’m talking about in my home.  I also haven’t paid for television service in this same amount of time.  Yet I am totally up to date on all of my favorite currently airing shows, my son gets to watch all the shows I will let him and I’ve been watching marathons of my favorite shows from days past.  We stream YouTube, wimp.com, music videos and TED conferences.  All with great quality streaming onto my 55 inch tv with no noticeable difference in how they looked from when I had cable, except no commercials and even more content.

For years Charter had the market on television (at least in St. Louis), after many years of complaints and bad customer service they tried to revamp their image.  Unfortunately for them this was about the time that AT&T’s U-Verse started taking hold, tearing into their market share. Satellite has been a second option for years but in my opinion never quiet took off as much as the other two.  Now a bigger threat has come along.  Internet based television viewing.

There are so many options for running media and internet on your t.v.  We’ve all heard of   Netflix and how you can get television shows and movies for just $9.99 per month.  Google t.v. allows you to run apps on your t.v.  Slingbox allows you to watch your t.v. from anywhere.  Boxee Box works similary to Google t.v. Lots of networks are airing shows on their websites, the best and most well know seems to be HULU.  One of my favorite websites Lifehacker shows you how to set up an XBMC media center, it also has some in depth tutorials on how all of this stuff works and reviews for the products.  Who needs a cable box when you can hook a computer up to your t.v. and stream your music collection, movies, photos and surf the net on your t.v. with it.

Google tv and similar products have a content issue but there are pirating sites like Pirate Bay and and BitTorrent where you can download torrents then run them from your computer and not have the issues of buffering.  Torrent downloading also allows you to download in HD quality so that it looks just like it would through cable. (no links here).  There are also sites who’s legality is up for debate like Icefilms which allows you to stream shows without downloading them (again no link due to the debate).  This is not an advocacy of pirating shows but the fact that an industry is building around ways to organize and watch your downloaded shows does speak to the demand.  Think about the days of Napster and Limewire when this began in the music industry.  They weren’t expecting it and are still trying to find ways to adapt, but even the Beatles have now given in to itunes.

Now it is time for the television networks to come to terms with the fact that the same thing is happening to them. People want to watch what they want when they want without commercials and we have slowly been programed by the likes of the very media empires that are going to lose out from the transition.  TiVo and DVR started it and Charter’s very own On Demand has made us even more accustomed to this ability.

My gut feeling is that the model of getting your television from a provider where you pay for bulk programming is ending.  Soon the days of paying for channels and shows you don’t watch will be over.  Maybe networks will run more like movie studios, instead of having to fill up all that time with crap shows they will produce less shows of higher quality.  Maybe you will pay for a subscription to your favorite shows, or the whole system will go to a pay per view system.  Product placement will become the new commercial.  Stealth advertising is already on the rise.  Television networks in my opinion have passed their golden age.  The age when commercial spots on cheap-to-produce reality programming lined their pockets.  Maybe it was this cheap form of programming that allowed them to miss the signs that this was coming.  I guess in reality I’m only a little bit surprised they weren’t ahead of the curve on this.  They have to adapt, it’s what the people want and our options are widening.  If they don’t adapt they will be left in the dust.

 

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