The Future of TV

Advances in technology are rapidly changing the way we “consume” entertainment. MP3 players with gigabytes of space on them mean we can take around entire jukeboxes in a player smaller than a pack of cigarettes. Satellite radio means we can get non-stop music or uncensored talk radio from anywhere in the country. Using my PC, I can record audio streams from thousands of radio stations anywhere in the world and burn them to an audio or MP3 CD for listening later in my car (or on a portable player).

But one of the biggest changes that will come is to the way we view television. Already DVRs like TiVo, ReplayTV and Scientific Atlanta’s Explorer are making just about all TV “commercial free” in a sense. There are very few shows that Lisa and I watch “live” these days as it’s just far more enjoyable to record it and use our DVR’s “super fast-forward” feature to skip through commercial breaks in around 5 seconds. Even for shows that we watch “live” – like 24 and Lost – we typically wait until around 20 minutes into the show before watching so that we can skip through all the commercial breaks and still finish the show at the usual time. And the easy-to-use interfaces on these DVRs mean that even Mom & Dad can record their favorite shows – either a single show or an entire series – and watch them at a time of their choosing.

The wide availability of broadband everywhere has led to the development of programs like Bittorrent that allow users to share large files as efficiently as possible. Because of that, websites all over the planet have cropped up that offer free downloads of hundreds of TV shows, almost all of them commercial-free. Some power users have even combined Bittorrent with RSS to allow for automated downloading of their favorite shows.

While it’s true that most folks don’t enjoy watching an entire movie or TV show on their PC, Media Center PCs – whether running Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center, some other third-party Windows software or even Linux – connect to standard televisions. This means that these downloaded shows need not be viewed on a computer monitor, regardless of whether they’re compressed with DivX, XviD or Windows Media – formats that are popular on PCs but almost unknown on standalone DVD players. And the incredible popularity of wireless networking means that these Media Center PCs don’t even have to have wires run to them – you can download any show to any computer on your home network and stream or copy it to your Media Center PC.

Lastly, the new “TV on DVD” craze absolutely indicates that viewers are interested in watching their favorite shows whenever they want.

So – having said all that – what got me thinking about the future of TV?

As you might know from my Spooks fanpage, it’s my favorite show on the tube these days. The show is made in Britain by the BBC. The BBC does not have commercials on its network (other than promos for other shows that run between airings of other shows). So the American version of Spooks has around 15 minutes cut out to allow for commercials. Also, US audiences get the show much later than British viewers. This is an ironic twist of snobbery, as it’s usually the British audiences that must wait 6 months to catch up with the gang on Veronica Mars or Smallville or what have you.

Of course, being the resourceful cat that I am, I downloaded the entire third season of Spooks via Bittorrent as it aired in the UK. At the same time, A&E has only just started running season 3 of Spooks (or MI-5 as they call it here in America). I probably won’t even bother watching the US version. But should I? How will the networks be able to gauge interest in a particular show – or, more importantly for them, sell advertising for said show – if tens of thousands of people are watching it on their PCs or DVD-R discs – and away from the “official” Nielsen RADAR? Will American shows continue to sell well overseas given that many of their most rabid fans in England and elsewhere have already downloaded the latest episodes off the Internet?

I conducted a poll at Ars Technica prior to writing this article and found that an astonishing 29% of the people that responded used only Bittorrent (or some other Internet technology) to download and watch their favorite shows. From that same poll, 19% of respondents said they used some form of “time-shifting” technology, like a TiVo or VCR. And a whopping 27% admitted to using both a time-shifter and Bittorrent. Of course, these numbers aren’t scientific. Ars is a geek hangout, so of course these numbers are shifted in favor of high-tech solutions that Joe Six-Pack hasn’t even heard of yet. And the poll itself was simply posted to their message board for voluntary replies – and thus not representative of even Ars in general. Regardless, a full 75% of those polled used Bittorrent, a DVR or both technologies to watch TV. Those are some impressive numbers and it shows an immense hunger for TV shows on our own terms.

How will it all play out in the future? For example, will traditional commercials die away, to be replaced by full-time “bugs” or “crawlers” in the corners of our screens? Will the new widescreen-standard TVs one day display shows in a 4:3 format and ads in the remaining space? Or will networks one day air a particular program at its usual time, then make available a VOD (video on demand) version for later viewing? Will “one size fits all” networks like ABC and CBS eventually fade away? Will they give up the “season” format – which creates brutal competition for viewers as well as a slew of horrible shows – for an “HBO format” where new shows come out whenever the network is ready to roll them out? While maybe only 5% of American homes have some form of DVR today, what if in the next 5 years number climbs to 20%? Would a large company like Coca-Cola or Ford still pay big bucks to advertise on Veronica Mars or Lost knowing that 20% of the viewing public are simply fast-forwarding through their ads? Or will the jackboots in the entertainment industry come up with some sort of “fast-forward override” law that will prevent us from skipping commercials? How will studios afford to even make any new shows if their advertising income dries up? Licensing and rights issues aside, will we one day be able to have television without borders?? I guesstimate that around 30% of my current TV viewing comes straight from British airwaves, bypassing BBC America and other licensed outlets like A&E or Bravo. I watch shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Battlefield Britain, Spooks, and My Restaurant Rules as easily and as frequently as any show on an American network. Will I one day be able to choose the uncut version of Spooks from my cable box and not the hacked up MI-5? On the flipside, how hard would it be to sell The Simple Life 5 to an Australian network, if everyone over there has torrented it already from American computers?

If you have some spare time today just let your mind wander… Ponder the future of TV and let me know what you come up with.