My brother and I were talking about this the other day. He currently doesn’t even have a working TV in his flat. The only shows I watch are The Daily Show, Meet the Press, Enterprise and The West Wing. And even those I do not watch live because watching them on my ReplayTV unit (It’s like Tivo, just a different vendor) is much more convenient. I also watch the Battlestar Galactica remake every Tuesday morning. Since it is airing in the UK on Monday night I’ll let you guess how I get to watch it on the other side of the atlantic the next day. Let’s just say the Web is a nice tool sometimes.
There is definitely a change in media and entertainment consumption habits taking place. The way I listen to podcasts on my iPod and watch TV on my ReplayTV unit is probably the way of the future. This post on the BBC World Web site (again, the Web) gives me reason to believe I am not alone:
Just over 54 million people are hooked up to the net via broadband, up from 34 million a year ago, according to market analysts Nielsen/NetRatings.
The total number of people online in Europe has broken the 100 million mark.
The popularity of the net has meant that many are turning away from TV, say analysts Jupiter Research.
It found that a quarter of web users said they spent less time watching TV in favour of the net. BBC
The interesting thing is that the BBC in particular seems to be very aware of this trend and it attempting to roll with it. BBC 4 is already offering a podcast of one of their radio shows and BBC digital television offers content such as interviews and background information about the programs.
What I was thinking about the other day when I was sitting somewhere on campus listening to a podcast Adam Curry had recorded in his car in the UK is that while the nature of how we exchange such programming and carry them around with us is different from our TV boxes that remain fixed in one place, it is remarkably close to the interactive TV revolution that we were promised in the ’90s. The ironic part is that TV appears to be the last medium in which this revolution is taking place.
Yet there are things about this that we could not have anticipated 10 years ago. Where we’ll be in another 10 years is anybody’s guess.
