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

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

#161

Post by dinkumthinkum »

VLM wrote: post #67

Another interesting aspect of the discussion, not discussed much, is what will the new purpose be for TV? What I'm getting at is people used to go to movies to see a movie. But thats technologically obsolete and frankly with all the previews and ads and hyper expensive junk food its too offensive to experience. However, movie theaters currently exist, and will exist in the future, solely for younger teens dating / ma…

Yes, no one goes to a movie theatre to see a movie any more. You definitely know what the world is like. Good job not being simplistic and simply assuming the world fits in whatever bias you have ... :)

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

#162

Post by mrweasel »

Everyone seems focused on TV shows. I'm not really concerned about TV shows, it's the news I'm interested in.

Granted, the news in TV, radio and most newspapers aren't any good as it stands now, but if we keep moving from TV to on-demand services like Netflix, funding serious news broadcasting will become an issue.

I'm not sure how it works in the US, but in many European countries, like the UK, Germany and Denmark, the public are required to pay for public broadcasting). This in part is suppose to pay for news and journalists... In reality it pays for crappy talentshows.

Still what's the model for serious news broadcasting going to be in the future? The models that seems to "work" is having a rich sheikh pay (Al Jazeera) or government funded (RT.TV / Press TV / France 24). This doesn't give you the best of news, but then again neither does ad funded news live CNN.

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

#163

Post by dinkumthinkum »

somberi wrote: post #142

The Sandra-Bullock movie "Gravity" cost as much to produce as the Mars mission recently launched by India (~ 100Million USD). Gravity made 500Million USD. Something does not sit right.

Shh ... We are supposed to believe no one goes to the theatre any more because that's the lamestream media or something ... Right, that's the correct echo chamber view?

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

#164

Post by dinkumthinkum »

clarebear wrote: post #124

When we stayed in a hotel and my preschool kids were subjected to cable, they were confused and angry. Why couldn't they choose the program they wanted? And on e they found a program that was acceptable, why did it keep stopping? They actually thought we were punishing them with commercials and could not figure out what they were doing wrong. Interesting to see it through their eyes.

These were preschool kids right? Confused and angry ... Is that uncommon for preschool aged kids? What other kinds of things can we learn about the world based on these data points ... ? I feel like there is a Malcolm Gladwell book here ...

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

#165

Post by thaumasiotes »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #48
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…

A lot of it isn't exactly copyright, it's contractual obligation, I suspect. In America, the "old guard" networks are still tied to local affiliate stations, which are increasingly anchors rather than efficient distribution points. International distribution has always been a maze of weird contractual obligations, but just like the American local affiliate problem, it's a case of "it made sense at the time." The prob…

Good luck getting a contract that bars the other person from showing your content when you don't have the copyright.

It's true there's nothing about "copyright", the legal concept, that implies that there should be no legal way to watch The Walking Dead in Europe... but it's also true that setting up that sort of circumstance is the point of copyright law. Copyright law is what enables the contract clauses you're talking about.

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

#166

Post by destroyAllCable »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #158
destroyAllCable wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a serious change in the nature of TV after the late 90's. Just after TV realized that O.J. Simpson, and Amy Fisher, and Nancy Kerrigan could feed a news cycle for months, if not years, TV lost a lot of charm. It was the popularity of the O.J. Simpson case that spawned the Court TV channel. Right around the time when the constantly scrolling, but nigh-unreadable news ticker showed up on all of the news chann…

Sue, but is thus any word than everyone that wants to be a YouTube celebrity?

It's not worse, but prior to the late 90's you didn't see this sprawling degenerative wasteland for what it really was.

The oddities were still out there, as a subculture, but no one was actively shoveling them to the forefront of television in hopes of a slight ratings bump at the sheer spectacle of yet another train wreck.

TV didn't have to try hard back when the only competition was movie theaters. In the 80's, before cable became a fashionable norm, some television stations could still rationalize "going off the air" between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.

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

#167

Post by Nux »

purringmeow wrote: post #36
bluthru wrote: post #5

Making me turn on the TV at a specific time and date to watch something is such alien notion to me at this point. All of these shows worry about schedules and what's on other networks, but that's eventually not going to matter at all.

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 wonder when TV networks will move into the 21st century. The next network delivers cheap, on demand HD content worldwide will make a ton of money :)

It's called bittorrent. Enjoy! :-)

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

#168

Post by eropple »

randomdata wrote: post #110
eropple wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is in your best interest to care, because otherwise these commons get mighty tragic. You are getting content without paying a representative cost of that content. Which is good for you! For now. But be prepared for that to change, and probably sooner than you'd like.

I've found content on Youtube by independent productions to be far better than what is on Netflix, so perhaps it is not that tragic. My tastes are probably not representative, but those types of productions are bound to improve as mainstream production quality declines, kind of like we've seen with music.

The begged question that mainstream music quality has declined is one of the more curious things I have read in quite some time, to say nothing of the implication that the same will happen with, say, dramatic content.

You may not like, say, Miley Cyrus (I don't), but artists and groups like Daft Punk and Radiohead are quite mainstream, quite successful, and quite good as well. The broadening of what is "mainstream" has added a lot of choice for pretty much everyone and a lot of it is quite good.

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

#169

Post by eropple »

selmnoo wrote: post #105
jseliger wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good riddance The downside is that cable subscribers subsidize the handful of TV shows I actually want to watch. Individually, every person who quits makes a rational decision, but when everyone quits we don't get a lot of good shows. Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away.

> Maybe Netflix or Amazon or whoever will take up the slack. Or maybe those shows will just go away. It already is. Netflix is funding a lot of new stuff (House of Cards, Orange is the new Black, lots of standup stuff). Note that this stuff is being received very well by normal consumers and critics alike. They're also funding canceled shows like Arrested Development, Lillyhammer, etc.

They're funding a lot of stuff relative to their perceived size, but they're not funding a lot of stuff relative to the gamut of content that exists. In particular, pilots are something that intuitively I feel like Netflix is going to have trouble speculating on at their size, whereas the networks and cable providers generally green-light a number of pilots per year. Netflix will need to hit on their productions (and have so far, to be sure, but they're betting on the surest of things) and I have a feeling that in the short- and medium-term that's going to result in what they've fielded so far: well-produced but not particularly innovative content with mostly established actors. That's not bad, to be sure, but it's...kind of boring.

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

#170

Post by 72deluxe »

backprojection wrote: post #118
interpol_p wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same position. I cut the cord five years ago and have just been using Apple TV for Netflix. TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully annoying. When I'm visiting my family I just have to turn off the TV, it's impossible to concentrate on conversation otherwise.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. But how do you handle situation? My family usually takes offense, and I can see that I would seem arrogant for doing so. I just don't know how to communicate how intrusive and strident the TV is to me.

Just explain that you can't concentrate on what they're saying with all of that noise, and you can see things out of the corner of your eye that distract you.

I don't have the TV on much at all to be honest. I don't understand the people that have it on all of the time, from waking to sleeping. Some people put it on as "background noise" but that doesn't make sense to me - you might as well tune a radio into FM between the stations for background noise or buy a white/pink noise generator and put that on!

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