No more channels?

There is a change happening in television today that is a real threat on television channels. When things like Hulu and OnDemand came out people realized that they no longer needed to be sitting in front of their television at exactly 9:00 on Tuesday evening in order to see the newest episode of LOST. Why, when viewers had the option, would they watch a show that may be interfering with another activity when they could just watch in on Hulu the next day? Many viewers wouldn't. I know personally that, except for LOST, I usually sit down whenever I have some free time and catch up on episodes that I've missed. Unfortunately for TV networks this is the way things seem to be going. With the emergence of Wifi enabled television sets what's going to stop viewers from simply going to Hulu.com and watching their favorite show? Many people who are against online viewing are so because of the quality and the tiny screen but when people have the option of viewing it on their big TV sets in clear quality I think they will become fans as well.

The way that this could impact the industry is that it could completely wipe out TV stations as we know them today if they aren't careful. The option to watch TV shows directly off of websites to peoples TV's is going to open a whole new option of viewing armature television. We all know that the site youtube, which is almost all viewer created content, is huge. What is going to keep people from using sites like youtube to create their own shows? And if the shows got bit why wouldn't Hulu offer to show them on their website? This could seriously lead to the end of channel lineups as we know it and the start of armature and independent creating shows and just putting them up on youtube. I think that this is going to have a great impact on the audience. Why would anyone want to search through and pay for television channels, for example the religious channel, if they can just pull up hulu and watch a show online. Or an even better idea. Why not use the OnDemand option. Instead of going onto the internet what if a company build in all the shows to an easy click option on the remote. So that in 10 years maybe there are no channels anymore. When you turn on your television it just sends you to a list of shows and it's your option what you want to watch. This is the way that television is going.

This has some relation to what Bryan Cooper (Flyers Producer) said to me that's going to happen to sports. He said that in the future of sports you are going to have the option to jump in front of your computer and watch any game you want, in any view you want, with which of the two feeds you want. Why not take this and move it directly to television. Say when you turn on your television and you scroll through all the option you decide to watch the Giants game so you click. What if then you were given the option to choose whether you would like the local Giants feed or the out of town Cowboys feed. Then what if they had cameras set up at various positions on the feels and you could choose which one you wanted to watch. Maybe have 3/4ths of the screen taken up by the main broadcast and then the right 4th taken up with three different angles of the game or maybe even three other games.


This relates to chapter 10 which is about webisodes. On pate 319 it talks about how professionally produced content appears daily on an equally impressive number of broadband vide channels. This is what the future of television will be. Instead of making a show for cable TV they will be making single shows to play only on Hulu or OnDemand.

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