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TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

businessinsider.com

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Re: TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

#81

Post by VLM »

GhotiFish wrote: post #75
VLM wrote: post #64

One truism of humanity is if you free a person, they try to enslave themselves as hard as they can. Sounds dumb, but its a wise observation of an older guy. Applied thru all aspects of life. Anyway the relevance to this discussion is as TV dies out, what will be the analogy of the Janet Jackson superbowel half time show? Who will legions of mindless drones mail (email?) complaints to, regarding reddits gonewild showi…

It will be interesting to watch, for sure. Informing weirdos and prudes that their opinions are irrelevant and they don't matter is one of 4chans specialities. So I'm definitely looking forward to it 20 years down the road. The tide seems to be that, all things considered, the internet will have free speech. Actual, real free speech.

"Informing weirdos and prudes that their opinions are irrelevant and they don't matter is one of 4chans specialities."

Its hard to imagine politicians not pandering to the prude weirdos or neopuritans or whatever they call themselves and instead embracing 4chan or reddit (or HN?) culture, but maybe its inevitable?

Re: TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

#82

Post by brownbat »

chc wrote: post #62
brownbat wrote: post #50

"TV is Dying" isn't the crazy part of this article. It claims people are chucking broadband subscriptions and using tablets and mobile internet, or more often, just free wifi from Starbucks (or neighbors?). Fascinating. If everyone dropped broadband, TV, and phone lines into the home, what's that world look like?

I'm pretty sure that part actually is crazy. They promise a graph showing in hard numbers that broadband subscriptions are down, but never actually provide one. They just provide a graph showing, as best I can tell, that total customers for cable companies are going down. In fact, they confusingly state that customers are moving from cable with broadband to "telco companies like AT&T and Verizon who offer TV as a pac…

> I'm pretty sure that part actually is crazy.

Ha, yeah, fair point and reasonable analysis. The dozen misleading graphs that don't quite support his point are looking more suspicious by the minute.

I kind of want to call Jim Edwards and tell him this is an interesting direction for a story, but he should probably chuck this rough draft and start from scratch before someone accidentally puts this on BI's site.

Re: TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

#83

Post by WalterBright »

pasbesoin wrote: post #57
hayksaakian wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using a cheap box and rabbit ears? You probably don't need a fancy setup unless you're in a building that blocks reception or MANY miles from a major city.

My friend who was (recently passed) a telecommunications engineer made one of those "clothes hanger" antennae and stuck it on the side of his house -- not even high up. Worked a charm. And they're a good 25 - 30 miles from most of the broadcast locations. He sent me a YouTube link to instructions for one. Not hard to do. Of course, results vary. But perhaps worth looking into.

I just stuck one end of about 3 feet of hookup wire into the antenna port on my TV and it worked fine. I made one of those HDMI antennas from instructions off the internet, and it only works marginally better.

The interesting thing is I could pick up channels over the air that were not on the cable TV lineup.

Re: TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

#84

Post by hnriot »

The cable and phone companies need to realize that they are ip providers only in the future. Either get with that picture or die. TV is moving to internet distribution (has moved for many) and mobile phones are computers with a voice modem that's not really needed. Just compare the audio quality of facetime audio to a phone call to appreciate the difference.

Mind you, what do i know, I gave up TV in 1991 - there's just for more to do on the internet.

Re: TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

#85

Post by acdha »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #72
purringmeow wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's not all! Insane copyright prevents a lot of people from legally watching popular series. I am in Europe and there is no legal way for me to watch say "The Walking Dead" or any other series. So what do I do when I don't get proper service? Piracy - it gives me on demand HQ content. I wonder when TV networks will move into the 21st century. The next network delivers cheap, on demand HD content worldwide will…

>> "I am in Europe and there is no legal way for me to watch say "The Walking Dead" or any other series." You can't buy the box set anywhere? You can download it from iTunes or another legal service? I'm in Europe too (UK to be specific and can do both of those things). I'm guessing what you really mean is you can't watch it when you want to, you have to wait a little while longer.

> I'm guessing what you really mean is you can't watch it when you want to, you have to wait a little while longer.

This is a pedantic restatement of the original point. It's still the fact that there are many cases where the copyright holders choose not to make something available in any form for people who don't live within a certain region or use a specific technology. They might change their minds in the future but until that happens, the only intellectually honest description is “no legal way”.

Re: TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

#86

Post by acdha »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #42

I wonder if switching from Analog signals to Digital has contributed to this... Not only do you have to buy the receiver box, which craps out and has a separate remote and interface, but Digital TV has really really terrible reception. I live in a large metro area and even we have tons of problems with reception, I can't image what it's like for people who live out further.

I've gotten the impression that the reverse has been happening: broadcast digital TV removed quality and reduced number of channels as a reason for sticking with cable. I know a number of people here (Washington DC) who've talked about dropping cable TV because they really only used it for live things (e.g. the Olympics, disasters, etc.) and a $20 antenna works well enough for that to make paying an additional $50+ per month completely unappealing.

Re: TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

#87

Post by ajtaylor »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #3

Good riddance. I cut the cord about a year and a half ago and replaced my cable box with a Roku box. There was a brief period where I missed the background noise but now I find broadcast/cable television unbearably grating. Frankly I think the cable companies brought it upon themselves with the constant loud commercial interruptions, the garbage programming, and the utterly miserable cable box interfaces.

I've recently purchased a Roku as well so I can use Netflix. So that combined with Plex + downloaded content means I hardly ever watch broadcast TV any more.

Re: TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

#88

Post by spiritplumber »

hrkristian wrote: post #20
chaz wrote: post #15

TV still has plenty of life in it. Be careful of those graphs with a non-zero y-axis minimum. But there is a shift happening. The biggest question to me is whether brand advertising dollars are/can/will shift with it. We need new ad products. Especially ones that will reach younger audiences who avoid current ad products. Maybe opportunities for Snapchat/Twitter. Also, content production is going to see some challeng…

Question is, at what point does traditional TV channels become so unpopular that they're simply not worth operating anymore? Perhaps the better question is, when does traditional TV become so unpopular those satellites taking up geosynchronous orbit space get dumped into the oceans?

Roughly never -- the satellites would just be repurposed. Sending mass to geostationary is EXPENSIVE. Like, 100k$/kilogram.

Re: TV Is Dying, And Here Are The Stats That Prove It

#89

Post by pan69 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #40
pan69 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has the future of video in the palm of their hands but they don't understand and don't care. Typical of a bloated empire. A little more reasoning would be appreciated.

Maybe I'll actually write something more substantive on the subject, there's a lot of depth to it. For now I'll just point out that many young creators in video are falling into the youtube sphere of influence. A lot of independent video producers have switched from using their own proprietary video distribution systems to merely hosting their videos on youtube. The monetization difficulties are made up by the ease o…

I'm not to sure what you're trying to say but to me it sounds like you're implying that Google owes people who want to create video content a living. That Google should supply tools and a monetisation model to people who want to make a living of making videos. I don't think it works that way. Google does what it thinks is best for them and if the current model is that, than so be it.

You rightfully pointed out some successful acts that have gained notoriety through YouTube, and good on them. They were the top content creators and were awarded for their efforts. YouTube seems to work if the quality of your work is good and outstanding. Personally I think the current model works well. Should all the crap that's being produced be monetizable?

I don't understand the Internet traffic thing. YouTube serves video which naturally takes up a lot more bandwidth than textual content, i.e. Twitter. I understand that YouTube is popular but you can't really measure popularity in bandwidth.

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