Truth be told, I don't watch TV anymore. And by that I mean local broadcast TV, whatever the pre-Internet distribution method (air, cable, satellite...). Instead I watch on my "television set" lots of long-form videos from the Internet, with more content than just cats playing piano.
I'm surprised at how effective is the system of "channels" on YouTube. Essentially it's a closed form of RSS, but it has the same effect of subscribing to various sources, and tracking which ones have new content and what content you've seen. This is similar to buying a season pass on iTunes, but for free content.
And it works so well. Like podcasts, when I have spare time I just look at the list of new stuff, their length, and I just pick whatever I want to see. It has both the advantages of syndication and time-shifting. That is the premise of digital video recorders, but the ones that are "licensed" in Canada for our TV providers are so limited and painful to use they fall flat. Instead, with Internet shows, you just subscribe to what shows you're watching, and that's it.
That doesn't prevent distributors having their own portals presenting their shows from one source, but that should be only some kind of cross-promotion instead of a restrictive walled-garden. What I'm saying is that the model of "buying the HBO channel" should go away, because no buyer intuitively thinks like that. You should buy shows you want, and the branding force of the production logo and some cross-promotion should be enough. Otherwise, we're tricked the same way as when for music we were forced to buy overpriced CDs filled with junk tracks just because there's a single song in it we like.
So, yeah, free ad-supported à-la-carte syndicated Internet TV shows is the way of the future. And after having watched these almost exclusively for a year now, I can't go back to "normal" TV anymore.
Published on June 20, 2012 at 21:53 EDT
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