TV is increasingly for old people
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
> “We suspect they will trade up,” Skipper said.
The implication here seems to be that cable is the premium/preferred product, and people will switch to it once they can afford a cable subscription. That does not at all strike me as being the case in this day and age.
The internet, and piracy, created an even more extreme shift in how you can consume video than it did for music. At least when you shelled out a ton of money for a CD, you still had the same experience when listening to the music. When you pay for cable or watch broadcast TV, you then not only have to wait for the scheduled viewing time, but you spend half as much time watching commercials as you do watching the actual program (10 minutes out of a 30 minute block).
Then on top of that you have to deal with the famously awful cable companies?
I think piracy + netflix have probably irreversibly changed people's willingness to sit through commercials, wait for the scheduled time slot, and put up with the other inconveniences associated with the whole process.
I understand some of this has gone away through video on demand and DVRs, but I still have to think that Netflix is superior when it has something and Popcorn Time when it doesn't.
It's not even the cost issue either. The cost issue is what got me started downloading music and video when I was a teenager, but nowadays (even though I'd be willing to pay a couple hundred bucks/pounds a month in theory) I've just had too much frustration and annoyance every time I've used a set top box (mostly in hotel rooms these days) to even have it on my radar as something that has the potential to make my life better.
Television shows and movies don't have nearly the timeliness factor sports broadcasting has. If I see guardians of the galaxy a week after it comes out it doesn't really matter, but there's very little point in watching 'the game' even a day after the fact (unless there's some exceptional reason to).
So in some regards, they do have kind of a stranglehold and are holding out hope that they can capitalize on that. It's funny talking to cable subscribers < 40, because (obviously anecdotal) the majority of the reasons given are 'how else am I going to watch sports?'
I think you can even switch between different commentators as well as a few other options.
As for myself, I'm sure plenty of money from my local taxes, once I move back to the US, will go to subsidizing pro sports teams. I don't particularly feel like doing so with a cable subscription as well.
The whole LA Dodgers fiasco may be a leading edge indicator of a breakdown between franchises and cable operators. There have to be some conversations within sports teams wondering if they would make more money going direct to fans. On the other hand, it might make both sides more resolved to cooperate for a bit longer in negotiations.
That doesn't really change your point though. I typically start watching after about an hour -- I'm highly unlikely to watch the game if I've already seen the score in the newspaper.
Paying >$100 a month to watch a couple of games a month sure is expensive, though. It'd be cheaper to watch them live, if watching them live wouldn't require plane tickets most of the time...
I don't watch anything else.
I was telling my 7yo about this yesterday. How in the old days, you couldn't just watch videos on YouTube or download whole seasons of Pokemon. No, there were only three channels, and things were shown at one time, and you had to be watching then or you'd miss it, and you couldn't watch it again. And it was horrible!
(Called my dad today, he was most amused too.)
This was provoked by having to explain to her that we couldn't just get all of Season 17 X and Y, because it hasn't all been broadcast yet, that there's just a new one every week. And of course it's unavailable in the UK ... except on the net.
She watches lots of CBeebies/CBBC. So I pay for a TV licence even though we don't have a TV. Because the BBC is worth it.
For the HN crowd, I thought ripping would be a no-brainer.
iTunes downloads aren't DRM-riddled (which is why my entire iTunes library is now part of my Google Play Music library.)
> For the HN crowd, I thought ripping would be a no-brainer.
Buy individual tracks and archiving them to your own media is a no-brainer, but ripping CDs isn't necessary to that when the major music download services all are (or allow you to export) portable, DRM-free copies.
Which means the flaw in their theory (for me) is the level of income I must attain is unrealistic.
Hulu+
I've had it for quite a while, beats having to be at home on a certain time to watch a show and also cuts the commercials way down.
Same with newspapers. You can't share newspaper content easily. You can't click on a word and Google it or look up information about Ukraine's president while reading the news paper. Newspapers take up space in your house and unread newspapers are a huge waste. I get some people like distraction free reading, without a glaring bright screen so the case here isn't as clear cut as with a TV, but the point is valid.
Older people, by virtue of having been around longer should be more capable of recognizing the pattern of new innovation leading to improvements, and not get stuck. I just don't get it, and I hope this doesn't happen to me, I'm already nearly in my 40's so we'll see.
I hear people claim that once everything's set up, it's easy. That's not my experience. Every time I go home I've got to deal with issues with my mom's computer and internet. They're never her fault, and sometimes they're difficult to solve, even for a tech person.
Watching video online is great when everything goes right. But it seems like a good portion of the country has fairly lousy internet, which makes videos sputter or stop. People who grew up with the ease and reliability of tv have a hard time stomaching these kinds of problems.
Also, when you get older, you don't necessarily want more choices. Your mind is tired and cluttered, you just want to relax in front of the tv and not have to sort through an infinite array of choices or deal with technical issues.
Because they are used to it and it works for them, so they couldn't be bothered? It's not all about "optimization" of options and full utilization of potential features, sometimes personal convenience is more important.
>Same with newspapers. You can't share newspaper content easily. You can't click on a word and Google it or look up information about Ukraine's president while reading the news paper. Newspapers take up space in your house and unread newspapers are a huge waste. I get some people like distraction free reading, without a glaring bright screen so the case here isn't as clear cut as with a TV, but the point is valid.
Not being able to "click on a word and Google it" is exactly why some people prefer newspapers. And it's exactly why some people who read the news on the web actually read 1-2 articles, skim 90% of them, and end up with cat videos somewhere on the corners of YouTube.
Also some people don't like sharing content. Why would I want to share a news item? As if I'm the purveyor of news to my un-englightened friends? Finally, "newspapers taking space in a house" is a first world problem if there ever was one. Let's be honest: nobody really considered "newspapers taking place" a real problem...
They have less to do, and probably don't care as much about maximizing every minute of their day. They probably also like a routine. Dinner at 5:00p, Matlock at 6:00p...
>> Newspapers take up space in your house and unread newspapers are a huge waste. I
You can also read a newspaper if you don't have internet, or your internet connection is slow, or down, or you can read it out on the porch or the boat where your wifi doesn't reach, you don't need an iPad to read it...
You also can't line the bottom of a birdcage, pack dishes, wash windows, or get a fire going with an online newspaper. You also can't cut an article out to save or pin up on the fridge.
Not necessarily. The current generations of "old people" have always had TV; they have always had books, newspapers and magazines; they have always had cassettes for music (vinyl was the reserve of a rich minority and CDs weren't mainstream until the '90s). They have always had cars, trains, electricity, airplanes. They were already 30+ by the time videogames and PCs came about, which is why they left them to their kids. In fact, they saw the digital revolution happening in the workplace and were taken aback, to the point where, 30 years later, they are still not particularly comfortable with it.
The generations that saw real technological revolutions, innovations changing their way of life in radical ways, were the ones that fought the first and second World War. A lot of them didn't have home telephones or electricity while growing up, often even running water was missing; they didn't have cars, trains were expensive, and the thought of flying was just ludicrous. They bought the first radios and TVs and marveled at silent movies. Those generations could recognise change; the current oldies mostly saw marginal improvements, all considered. They spent most of their time actually dealing with social changes, rather than technological; which is why they are responding to the current wave of changes with a barrage of social prescriptions (i.e. silly new laws) -- they can see the social change happening, although they don't really understand the technological underpinnings of it.
I'd imagine they simply don't understand how these things work. I don't think my parents have ever intentionally watched a YouTube video. I'm sure they've heard of Netflix, but I don't think they know how to setup it up... so they wont even consider the value proposition... even though their Blu-ray player has built-in Netflix support.
We've grown up with this technology so it's not a big deal to rip a DVD or download a torrent.
But if you're barely aware that these things even exist, it's difficult to actually learn how to use them... even if the procedure is ultimately trivial.
1. Computers and Internet are for work (HN being an exception), TV is for
entertainment. It makes sense to keep things separate, even physically
separate.
2. If I watch TV, I do *not* want to be bothered about thinking what to watch.
I reserve these kinds of decisions for work or for things that actually
matter.
3. If another person makes the program for me, I'm likely to be exposed to
interesting things that I would not have picked by myself.Obviously this is a useful mode to have. TV channels about wildlife and history are good examples - you can turn them on even for 10 minutes while you do some chores, for example. But for "stateful" content like sports or TV series this is suboptimal. And that's the bulk of entertainment.
Saying something doesn't make it true.
>2. If I watch TV, I do not want to be bothered about thinking what to watch. I reserve these kinds of decisions for work or for things that actually matter.
Fair point. It's the same reason I listen to pandora in that sometimes I'd rather not choose.
> 3. If another person makes the program for me, I'm likely to be exposed to interesting things that I would not have picked by myself.
Maybe but more often than not, this isn't true unless you find the massive amounts reality tv to be interesting.
But none of the reasons you describe make TV with cable optimal for anything except lying back and having random (not necessarily good or interesting) entertainment thrown at you and exposing yourself to hours of psychological marketing tricks.
A. You are picking and choosing your content.
B. You aren't exposed to advertisers (unless you are using hulu but even then you are picking what show you want to watch)
C. You aren't paying a massive monthly subscription.
D. It works using the internet, not cable.
The article isn't so much about using a TV (the actual device that displays the picture) or a computer monitor as it was about watching "traditional" tv (the content, shown in a scheduled manner)
Watching shows on the internet is great. The acting talent and quality there has really improved. But, I see this less as taking away from cable, and more as taking away from the box office. Kevin Spacey was doing great movies 10+ years ago, and now he's headlining Netflix's service. Honestly, I think these long running tv shows are a better format for a lot of actors. Breaking Bad just can not be done in a 2-3 hour movie, or in a syndicated format where each episode needs to be treated more or less independently (e.g. Law and Order). However, Netflix didn't really start that trend, cable did.
Also, cable/tv "owns" the coax cable running through the house: the fastest and most reliable way of moving information around the average US home. There's new technologies like Moca that are going to make a lot of things possible that currently are very flakey with current wireless/alt-ethernet solutions.
TV has always been (mostly) about mindless entertainment. I think the shows that are successful outside of a traditional cable package succeed because they were probably inappropriate for the cable programming format anyways. Services like Netflix are filling a new niche, but I don't think they can significantly take away the core value of cable for most people.
There's still plenty of people watching content in the TV format, they just are not doing it from exactly 8pm to 11pm in the way that they used to.
For the former, even among people not paying at all, or not paying for it through the traditional cable company means, big-studio TV content seems more popular than ever (unsurprising since it's higher quality than ever, with still-increasing amounts of money pouring into it). This shift ultimately seems like one that will only hurt the traditional broadcast networks, as well as the cable networks that fill themselves with "passive watching" content versus the stuff that (currently, at least) plays much better in the newer distribution channels. Or maybe stuff like reality will just move online later when that demographic moves online if cable starts to fail. That's probably an area where the "it just works, and it's on, set it and forget" aspect of cable is actually a very large advantage, though. Otherwise, about the only non-large-content-library advantage of cable is that fast forward/rewind on my DVR work way better than on online streaming.
Extreme space and budget restrictions seem to be the only reason to give up the latter. The couch or recliner + TV viewing experience is hard to do without (I did it for a couple of years after moving and being short on space, and then couldn't believe I'd done it for so long after getting a TV again).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2014/telev...
I shudder to think what the average age is of broadsheet newspaper readers is...
I suspect that it helps in Oxbridge and Ivy Entrance interviews as well
Sarcasm aside, the relative popularities of Fox News on TV and Vice on the Internet are pretty good examples of what this article is talking about.
There is a huge gap in wealth between generations thanks to debt via housing and education. Are advertisers putting pressure on program makers to make shows that appeal to old people? I'd guess they've done a lot of thinking on this.
You sound like there's a ton of incentive to make TV channels for teenagers, promote mortgage and colleges on it. Capture all the unserved audience, make $$$s. If that's where all money go in this generation.
Knowing that the youngest person in the oldest half of the TV population is getting older does tell you something interesting, and slightly more specific than what the mean gives you, although I suspect mean and median are fairly close in this case.
Of course it would be nice to have mean, standard deviation, median, and maybe a few other percentiles. Better, a full histogram. But median is hardly useless.