Do we need to redefine 'TV'?

Last Updated on Saturday, 14 March 2009 00:22 Written by Kelsey Brookes Friday, 06 March 2009 08:06

Since its inception, the word 'television' has been synonymous with the device itself. TV is the box. It's also the word we use to describe a type of content, the production values behind it and the business model used to sustain it.

Yet the traditional broadcast model is changing. How we watch TV, more importantly how we want to watch TV, is changing. While the birth of the VCR prompted a quiet revolution in our viewing habits, the end-game of that revolution is yet to be played out - and already it's a lot noisier than expected.

At stake is either the traditional business model of television production or the ability of the consumer to dictate how they want to watch TV.

Big business didn't like the VCR. Rather than paying to watch new movies at the cinema, people were staying in, watching old movies at home. In the end, it benefited the movie industry; people still went to the movies and then rented those same movies over and over again. People like the comfort of a known quantity and VCRs and later DVDs provided that.

At the same time, DVDs sparked a whole new market segment. While the bulky VHS tape meant that storing entire TV series required serious investment in furniture, DVDs allowed us to consume TV in far greater quantities and with greater convenience than ever before.

People like good TV. They even like bad TV! TV gives us something that movies rarely can: sustained and complex character development. Something to sink our teeth into and grow to love. Characters become like family.

So it's no surprise that it's TV shows that are driving new viewing habits. Unfortunately for the TV industry, the other benefit of VCRs, the one they futilely railed so hard against is also the primary strength of the new reality: time shifting.

Time shifting means you record now, watch later. The industry hated it, even trying to ban the fast-forward button. Their revenue model was at stake. 

Fortunately for them, as easy as it was, recording the odd TV show wasn't the apocalypse they thought it to be. Then DVDs arrived and their profits only increased.

Everything old is new again. Time shifting has reared its ugly head again, but in a far more dangerous way to the TV industry. TV shows can now be downloaded. Legal downloads aren't the problem, there's a new revenue model to sustain them. Filesharers are the new danger. Either for ideology or status they record live TV, strip out the ads and upload the shows to the internet. All within hours of broadcast.

While plenty of tech-savvy people are downloading and watching shows, this is in reality a small subset of society as a whole. An even smaller subset of those who download are able to watch these shows on their TV.

And let's face it - no-one prefers to watch TV on their computer: it's always nicer to kick back on the couch and relax with a good show.

So what happens when it becomes trivial for the average Joe with a computer and an internet connection to access these shows and watch them on their TV?

The end of the TV industry as we know it.

That's not to say it's the end of TV production, it's just the end of the business model as it stands today.

People like convenient solutions, easy solutions and lazy solutions. With a trivial amount of technical knowledge it is now possible to download newly broadcast shows. It's almost as easy to automate which shows you want and have them downloaded as soon as the files are made available. It's possible for you to build with little expense and no tech savvy at all, a media centre which will find your TV show files on your home network, categorise them, name them, download the synopses and show art and present it in an attractive and easy to manage package - viewable easily on your TV.

You can watch what you want, when you want for no more than the cost of your internet connection. It looks great, is easy to use and is convenient. 

That's a trifecta of pain for the TV industry, but it's the way everyone would watch TV if they could. The ultimate in on-demand. No waiting for US shows to be released internationally and no paying the 'entertainment tax' created by region control.

But if the business model doesn't work, does that also mean the death knell for the quality of production as we know it?

TV production is struggling to find its way in this new media convergence.

Some companies are making great strides in making it both convenient and inexpensive for consumers to access the shows they want.

AppleTV in particular is a device whose time has come - Instant access, cheap media, easy integration in your home entertainment setup. It's a near-perfect device, even with its unfortunate region-based restrictions and pricing.

There are other devices - Roku in particular are doing well, although their model is bound up in a rental framework (streaming) rather than owning.

But will this be enough? The industry is only now catching onto the fact that people are timeshifting their shows: The premiere of Dollhouse increased its ratings by 30% once timeshifting was accounted for. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles increased by 36%.

Those numbers only include authorised downloads and recordings. One can only imagine the increase if non-authorised sources were included.

Unauthorised sources are in many ways more convenient to use than legitimate sources. Views from these will never, should never, be counted as they don't contribute to the show's bottom line: ads are stripped out, so they can't be used to secure sponsorship for the shows.

The hardware already exists, as do the distribution channels. It's simply that the business model hasn't changed, making criminals where there could be customers.