Synthesis Studios

The whammy for our boob tube habit is that the most exciting thing about the Fall 2006 television season is: what’s not on our televisions. Is this predicting is the end of our “free TV” as we know it.

No longer are we scouring the news and watching advertisements to find out when new (and returning) TV shows are premiering. No longer are we waiting for them. In fact, now, the studios are pushing them into our faces as quickly as they can. Aaron Sorkin’s new dramedy, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and NBC’s new thriller Kidnapped are both available ready for the renting through our favorite DVD-by-snail-mail-operation Netflix weeks before their third-week September premiere dates over the airwaves. The Class (CBS’s attempt at a comedy) is going to show up on TiVo a week before its 18 September date. Of course, what the networks are trying to do is reel people in early — but it leaves me wondering whether this is good or bad for them? Are they missing out on the opportunity to get advertising during their new show premieres? Just like box office openings, isn’t that their only chance?

What’s happening to our beloved TV? Two things: television is not “user friendly” enough, and viewers are becoming smart. TiVo and DVRs in general have freed viewers from the rigidity of television schedules (arguments that the VCR did it first aside). Teenagers flock to YouTube like crazy at first word that a TV show got illicitly posted there. People aren’t enjoying being shackled to their television and to the whims of network advertisers. Unless you’re a diehard television junkie (like me, who on my last international flight caught up on hours of TV shows on my laptop screen), the math of even simply purchasing television shows on iTunes is even compelling. A standard (digital) cable subscription in a metropolitan area about $50 a month. At $1.99 an episode, a TV series runs you $7.96 month meaning you can watch, download, and store 6 TV shows. For The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, Apple even offers a multi-pass that gives you a podcast like interface to the show at a cost of about $0.62 an episode. Throw both of those in, and you can still even subscribe to about four TV shows a month — all you’ll be missing is the news (and even then, go subscribe to CNN’s Pipeline or watch the CBS Nightly News simulcast) and sports. And you’ll get a freedom that you don’t enjoy with standard TV (comments of the restrictions of Apple’s DRM aside).

Honestly, to me it’s no wonder that actual television viewership is on its decline. People are trying to get at what they really want to do — watch video content. And they are willing to find the best way for them to do it. Think of it as people flocking away from landlines and getting cell phones. All they want to do is talk, and landlines locked them into a usage model that’s becoming outdated. The question becomes: do networks do something to attempt to keep their TV viewers planted on the couch, or do they roll with the punches and change with the times?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Synthesis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.