YouTube, Gaming and Social Networking Busting TV's Chops 118
splitenz writes "A TV executive told a major Australian broadband conference that television audiences are slipping away into social media, gaming and other online subscription spaces. YouTube and online gaming is taking the traditional TV audience online and TV is struggling to fight back."
Well, lets see what is on TV shall we? (Score:3, Interesting)
The BBC, yesterday. One side showing "the wedding". The only way I watch that if they made it interactive and I could enact my republican fantasies. Once thing about the French, they know how to deal with royalty. Russians too. Nice job guys, want to helps the rest of the world out?
The other side, snooker. The most boring thing ever to be televised apart from hurdling. That is it! On a friday! Prime time TV? Must watch TV? Not on the beeb.
Have I Got News For You is still funny although this weeks episode seems to have been cancelled and the previous one was more about "The wedding" then the middle east being on fire. Gosh they have plenty to say if Israel defends itself by killing a single muslim in a week but if muslims kill hundreds of muslims that is apparently not fit to discuss in a satirical news program. Am I so wrong in finding it all funny?
The rest of the time, cooking shows. Now don't get me wrong. I like food and I am actually quite good as a cook but how many master chefs can one stomach? According to the BBC dual and even triple episodes in a row.
Okay, so to discovery, geographic channel and animal planet. If anyone in America is bored, then you please go and shoot that mexican dog licker? My god that show is on 24/7. If I want to train a bad dog I kill its owner, then eat the dog. Just because a single program does well does NOT make it a good idea to replace your entire schedule with it. Diversity, it is the spice of live. For instance I would like some cat sprinkled on my chow.
Discovery? Come on, Cake Boss? Are you serious? And you thought American Chopper was gaying it up as much as possible. (come on and entire show with butch men in leather making shiny stuff). I get tired of the same formula. "Oh shit, we are running out of time, yet again, we do so every single time but never learn to start a bike, cake build a tiny bit earlier because thatwould deprive us of fake tension only the most gullible would believe". Even if some of the programs are interesting, the commercials kill it. Not just to long, to loud and to stupid, they repeat the same ones over and over in the same show AND then run ads for the very show I am trying to watch. That is like ordering a burger and then being told about that very burger instead of serving it.
Comedy Central? Thank you, I seen the Simpsons a dozen times over and Family Guy and such are simply not funny to anyone who isn't 12.
There is simply nothing to watch. Now I don't hate TV, I am as ready as the next guy to sit in front of the idiot tube after a day at work and let my mind rot. I like it, just there is absolutely nothing on or if it is it gets interrupted by a 5 minute commercial block. That causes me to look away and when I look back, the NEXT commercial block is on.
Instead, I simply download the few things I want to see (since I am in europe often the entire season is available already by the time I hear about it) and watch them in HD with no commercials blocks and no re-scheduling because some jack-booting asshole wants to get married to a slut.
TV has a problem. People like mindless entertainment but for millenia they had to create it themselves. Once every household had a musical instrument because that was the only thing to do at in the evening hours. Theathers were everywhere filled with crap actors for when people got fed up with the same song every day. Then movies came and made entertainment for the masses for the first time. TV made it even easier, just pump a production straight into everyones home. The perfect way to spend those hours between work and going to bed. Don't deny it and claim you read a book, statistics prove you didn't.
But that was in the days when we had no choice. Either you watched it on the TV stations terms or you didn't. And because they controlled us (don't deny it, I seen the empty streets when something special happened in TV land) they thought they would always control us and added longer and longer commericial blocks, now even showing ads over the programs
Re:poor content (Score:4, Interesting)
With you in spirit, but your statements are tinged with hyperbole. The major networks air more than 2 good shows a week, and more and more "cable channels" like AMC, USA, TNT, etc have begun airing some quality original programming. However, for every show like 30 Rock or The Closer, we get ten Real Worlds, Survivors, or Dancing with the Stars.
Premium channels have been booming with original content in recent years. Maybe it's just because I did not have access to them much before BT trackers and release groups got into them, but I think there are more original shows on HBO, Showtime, etc than there used to be. Sure, you had things like 1st and Ten, Dream On, and the Red Shoe Diaries on HBO and Showtime 15-25 years ago, but now you have so much more. A lot of great shows in recent times have come form these networks (Deadwood, Weeds, Dexter, The Sopranos), along with a great deal more entertaining ones (The Tudors, Rome, Secret Diary of a Call Girl (not original, I know)).
As someone else has stated, the real problem is that TV providers have made it an increasingly hostile environment to watch their content.
- More commercial time per hour. The average 1-hour show is under 44 minutes now.
- Channel identifier logos on constantly. In the beginning these were semi-transparent line-art, now they are colorful and often animated.
- Squashed and sped-up credit sequences. Sure, few people want to see them, but sometimes we do, and without commercial/news at 10 hype
- Pop-up in-show ads "New Episode of Dancing With the Stars NEXT" at the bottom of the screen, blocking this show
- Time-shifting to screw up DVR users
- Loudness tricks to make commercials seem louder than the show. Gotta crank up the movie because it's so quiet, then WHAM! "BUY ZEST SOAP!"
- Constant schedule changes
I gave up cable TV about 8-9 years ago. I was heavy into anime at the time, had just moved, so I went with internet and substantial DVD purchases (back when DVDs were still $30 each, though you could get them for ~33-50% off online). I found out I just did not need to veg out in front of TV shows I didn;t care about every evening. I read more books, was online more, had other things to do.
It was liberating. ^_^
Re:Well yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
I see TVs used for these purposes:
1: Placate older viewers who have not hopped onto the Internet as a mainstream source of information.
2: Act as background noise so people waiting in some sort of waiting room have something to focus on.
3: A distraction in a hospital room.
4: People who want to be spoon fed the news. For example, in 5-10 minutes of reading Google News, I get all the stories that it would take a TV watcher 1-2 hours of sitting there getting spoon fed whatever biased info the station chooses to put on there. Of course, Websites can be biased, but it is easy to flip between several and at least figure out a nugget of truth out of the haystack of propaganda.
With this in mind, it is understandable that the top tier economic base of people have moved from TV to other forms of entertainment.
It shows in how much money is being spent on TV shows too. TV studios don't care to spend the top dollar on sci-fi shows and special effects. Why do that, when doing a "reality show" is far cheaper? Why pay for a sonic screwdriver wielder when a Snooki will score the advertising bucks?
This race to the bottom is not just killing TV, but radio too. Radio once was the place to find new bands. Now, that has been replaced by word of mouth, YouTube, and services like last.fm and Pandora, and what you hear on the radio is likely what people's fathers or grandfathers heard when they were drag-racing their Trans-Ams.
What needs to happen? A return to the roots. TV has a niche for education, especially kids too small to really put in front of a computer. This is what the inventor of the medium conceptualized TV as being for. TV also needs to start showing stuff that other mediums have trouble with, such as films from up and coming producers. Radio needs an enema too. They need to go back to having not just a 1-2 hour special on Friday nights with new stuff, but start showcasing new bands... just like they used to before the late 90s. Then they might be relevant in daily life again.