TV Loses Grip on Eyes and Ads That Want Them
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Anyway, back to the point, I am now in my mid-thirties and have never owned a TV. Of course I wasted a lot of time this way in my youth, but since the advent of Internet, online streaming, torrents, etc. I find television to be terrible user experience, because it is totaly non-interactive. I just can't stand the fact that someone else is making the schedule that I need to follow.
Internet gives me the possibility of watching what I want whenever I want it. The only exception to this rule are football matches that must be watched live, but those also are streamed nowadays.
I expect television to be completly gone in 10-15 years time.
So yes, the experience is much worse than internet tv, at least for onboarding 4 year olds. (As a replacement for tv my son picked building sand castles and playing miniature golf, so huge win)
I think "physical" TVs have still a way to go, I'm in my mid-thirties and haven't plugged in mine to an aerial since at least 10 years, but it still sees extensive use plugged in to a console or to an HTPC.
But 10-15 years it's lot of time in tech, maybe by that time we will have holodecks :)
I'm a little confused by this statement. The industry that produces the content you stream is what I would call "television" and if it's gone there will be no new content to stream.
Which of the two cable company boxes in your house it's delivered through seems like an implementation detail.
So yes. If the legacy TV industry does not change their business model ASAP , their days are counted.
House of Cards was created by Media Rights Capital, which has a portfolio of "legacy" TV and film projects [0].
Orange is the New Black was created by Lionsgate, which also did Mad Men [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Rights_Capital#Televisio...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionsgate#Television
Netflix-originated content is absolutely produced by the legacy TV industry, it's just purchased for distribution by a company specializing in a different method of distribution.
I am really unsure of where your '50 years ago' timeframe is coming from. If there were interactive on-demand radio services back then, I certainly have never heard of them, and they definitely did not reach a level of accessibility where giving up traditional broadcast radio in favour of on-demand programming could be a realistic option for most of the population.
To add to that, audio is not necessarily consumed the same way video is. People might be completely happy to have a non-interactive previously scheduled radio broadcast ready for them when they hop into their car, for instance, while not accepting the same of their screen in the living room. Just because he thinks that non-interactive TV will soon be dead does not mean he believes radio will reach the same fate.
Stop taking the argument too literally. It's not about interactive vs non-interactive. It's about the next technology killing off the previous one and how narrow minded it is to believe something so ingrained and central to society will disappear so fast.
Why don't you set an alert, come back here in 15 years, in 2031, and let me know if TV is gone. I guarantee you it won't.
But the parent isn't calling for the demise of audio or video content. He's calling for the demise of scheduling done by a third party, where you have to comply to someone else's programming whims. I do think it is fair to say that the TV did completely change the way people listened to radio.
> It's not about interactive vs non-interactive.
It is precisely about interactive selection vs. being fed programming on a predefined schedule. The original comment was very explicit about this, and he claims the latter will eventually disappear, in favour of the former. He isn't saying people are going to stop watching video content in their living room, he's saying they aren't going to continue to sit down at exactly the time someone else says they have to, else risk missing the show, or be fed content they do not want to see because they want to watch video at that time. From the VCR, to the PVR, to now on-demand Internet streaming the trend is clear that people want to make their own programming schedule choices. As the technology becomes more convenient (Netflix beats setting a VCR by a long shot!), abandoning the old broadcast schedule becomes more and more appealing to more and more people.
> Why don't you set an alert, come back here in 15 years, in 2031, and let me know if TV is gone.
Because, quite frankly, I couldn't care less if it comes true. I wasn't making the claim in the first place.
Looking at the graph in the article, ad spending on TV is at an all time high, it has just plateaued. So maybe revenue isn't the issue, maybe quality is.
It my guess that the TV networks somehow believed that if you made X amount of dollars on one channel, then adding a second channel would make you twice that amount. Networks that had one or two stations 15 years ago, now have 8 or 10. Rather than increasing profit, they are left with roughly the same amount of revenue, but they have to spend it on content for many more channels. Not wanting to close channels, networks started to produce cheaper programs, "reality" TV mostly. Meanwhile you can't buy a good, independent news channel, even if you're willing to pay.
TV can blame streaming, Youtube, the internet in general, but that's not what's "killing" TV. I believe it's the quality of the content that's the issue for TV.
You are too kind... it largely sucks.
I have Sky+ here in the UK and there are a not-insignificant number of programmes that are on 3 channels at the same time.
In addition, the same shit gets shown over and over again: A case in point is the ITV Bourne channel... which then switches to become the ITV Matrix channel and over and over again (It's actually ITV4 but they keep showing the same stuff repeatedly.
Also, take the Discovery channels (I mean all the others too like History and so on). They used to have actual decent content but now it's all reality crap with the odd programme about nature.
When you add in other shows about Kim Kardashian or <celeb of the week> and 24 hour news then there isn't much left.
I don't watch much in the way of TV these days (over a week it probably averages out to 30 mins a day or something) but I do record some programmes to watch later: My favourites being Columbo and anything to do with dinosaurs or outer space :)
That being said, I always forward through the ads...
I fail to see how advertising on a channel that just shows repeats actually brings any significant value to the advertiser!
On the other hand, the quality of serialized dramas being released these days is unparalleled. There are so, so many well written shows being made right now with razor sharp production. But people are mostly getting these shows by paying the production companies directly (Netflix, HBO, Amazon) or simply streaming them illegally.
Along with being reminded, by a questionable non-profit, over animal abuse. (I literally need to turn the station. I'm all for squelching any animal abuse, but I want to give to the right organization.)
Along with another highly questionable non-profit begging for "cash for cars". It goes to the children? I heard they have one residential home for troubled kids in the Sierra foothills--that serves 16 kids. All those millions, and one home in the hills.
Along with the Abilify commercial. My dubious hetero-cyclic depression drug is not doing the trick, so add this dubious drug. "Oh, but it works 67% over placebo! But the study was 300 people? Most people got better by placebo. The few that actually benefitted from the drug is a small percent once you take away placebo. (Yea--I know this is how they "study" these drugs, and no I don't have a cost effective way to change research methodology.)
I don't watch t.v., but have it on as company. I live alone, and just need some noise in the backround. I guess to stifle my negative thoughts?
I do know I'm very close to cutting the cord. I think I'll be ok with old movies on DVDs. I couldn't imagine having cancer, heart disease, or diabetes and having to sit through theses commercials--that seem designed to scare people.
I really wish the FDA would outlaw all medical advertisements. I wish some regulated body would require advertising non-profits to disclose administrative costs in advertisements.
It's stronger than ever in the Internet, which provides new ways for ads to interrupt you.
If ad creators would admit that they have a responsibility to be ethical and entertaining for their target audience, they'd have a lot better luck with their campaigns.
Instead, they concentrate on trying to have captive audiences and use mind-games to try to get people to view their ads. It's sad, but the more tech-savvy people get, the less it works.
They're scrambling.
Coincidentally, newspaper companies are extremely cheap these days.
Really? It's not obvious now?
Being able to make measurements is a huge advantage for online ads.
But when it comes to ad viewership, I'm guessing all they can really measure is the attempt to show someone an ad. I'm not sure they have a good way to measure compliance. Are people actually watching the ads, or are they using ad breaks as an opportunity to take a leak, get another soda, or mute the TV and talk to each other?
Granted, the same's true for Internet ads. Does anyone really sit through YouTube ads? Or do they just mute their computer's audio and go take a peek at Facebook while the ad plays?
Sorry, but this isn't true. We've known for a long time that their ratings are BS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings#Criticism_of_r...
Your other point is true though: They can only attempt to track who is watching ads, not actually track.
It's actually really easy today for the vast majority of people with modern "cable" in the US. The reason why you need a cable box for each TV isn't just for de-scrambling the signal, it's also so we measure what channel you watched, when, and for how long. Go look into each cable box... it's basically a computer just like your modern Samsung TV, and like all computers it has "telemetry" baked in. We record telemetry regardless if it's live or DVR -- that's why the DVR is integrated for most consumers today.
All the major ad buyers know their "reach" per placement (the individual ad being broadcast during programming) pretty accurately. What's harder still is which people actually saw the ad, but we're getting closer.
We already know who you are as a subscriber (you had to provide us a SSN, phone number, name, and mailing address to get an account), so we literally know your household.
The only missing piece is which member of the household watches each show. There is some work to correlate internet traffic to infer which person was home at the time the ad played, but it's been less than helpful during prime time broadcasts when the whole household is home anyway.
We're working on it.
Anon because broadcasting all this tracking isn't good for my career.