“Nobody believes that people would choose to watch a computer instead of a TV”.
Want to guess when this quote was made? Five years ago? Wrong. Two years ago? Wrong? A year ago? Wrong. This week? Right.
So who’s the smarty-pants behind it: TSN president Phil King, who either has no clue about how TV distribution and consumption is changing, or his words were taken out of context when he was interviewed by the Globe & Mail. King’s quote was based on his rejection of a suggestion that his station’s ratings for the National Hockey League trading deadline fell 18% compared with last year because the shows were streamed on the Web at the same time.
I suspect King is smart enough to realize the TV landscape is changing, particularily for a sports channel whose audience – 25 to 49-year-old males – are pretty tech savvy and more likely than the general population to watch sports on the Web. That said, Canadian broadcasters have taken a far more conservative approach to the Web than their U.S. counterparts. CBC, for example, has a major Web presence but almost non-existent video streaming or video archives (On the other hand, CBC Radio has done extremely well with podcasts with many of its shows topping the iTunes charts).
It may be that Canadian broadcasters are being pragmatic and waiting to see how U.S. broadcasters make out before they jump into the market. This is standard operating procedure for the industry, which watched from the sidelines as the FCC pushed the U.S. broadcasting industry into the digital age. (Ironically, Toronto-based Leitch Technology thrived by selling all kinds of expensive equipment to U.S. broadcasters). Still, it would be refreshing to see Canadian broadcasters become just a little more aggressive.
For more thoughts, check out Sports Business News, which has a long post on how sports leagues are gravitating to the Web.
The biggest issue with TV over the internet right now are the limitations on bandwidth, and in turn, on quality. I have a near-zero interest in watching TV on the web or downloading shows, but only because I have a relatively large HD set and most downloaded shows just don’t look that good on it.
The only show I download reguarly is the BBC’s “Top Gear”, which is not available to me via cable. Until the my internet connection is fast enough to quickly download HD, the majority of my television viewing will be done by traditional means.
The lucrative 25-49 demographic mentioned is certainly tech-savvy, and that just means they are also more likely to own a high quality television set. If they are already enjoying HD content coupled with a PVR, there isn’t much incentive to watch TV on their computers.
I haven’t switched on a TV in almost 3 years. I was living abroad for 2 of those years and moving back to Toronto I realized I didn’t need a TV. Downloading shows is much more convenient that being tied to the networks schedule. Popular shows like Lost are on the internet 15-30 minutes after they aired and download in about 1 hour. Them I am free to choose when I want to watch it without commercial. I probably watch more TV like this because I can get shows that aren’t aired here (ie. HBO shows like the Wire, etc).
Only 2 problems, can’t get local news or sports and the illegality of it. I don’t have a huge moral problem with it but since there is no easy, inexpensive alternative I’ll keep doing it.
A few of us in the office have multiple flat screens, 1 panel tuned into daily business and the other showing the draft live.
I have 2 large HD TV’s at home but if I’m not parked in front them and I need or want to watch something NOW I like that I have that option.
TV on the lap top good, fire bad!
I have a HD TV at home, but I never watch anything on it because a) the HD programming in Canada sucks and b) I’m never home when anything is good on. TV really needs to change it’s whole format — many people don’t have time to be at home 8pm on a certain day just to watch a particular program and get a particular advertising set rammed down our throats.
I’m a big fan of that TV show 24, and I’ve downloaded every episode a few days after it’s been broadcast. Sure, it probably wouldn’t look that good on my HD display, but I’m never in front of my HD display so it’s kind of a mute point.
Was it not TSN that broadcasted the world junior hockey championship on the net only two months ago to very large numbers? How soon he forgets.
Why wouldn’t you want to watch TV on your computer as long as the quality is ok. I have an HTPC hooked up to a 50″ TV – before long everyone will have a PC-like device hooked up to their TV. After all you could argue that most digital cable boxes are dumb PCs and Cisco (which bought Sci Atlanta) and Motorola control that market and are likely to push the market in that direction.
At the moment I have a media center PC with two tuners so I never watch live TV, I just watch the recorded shows from all my keywords, actors, directors, sports that I like. I watch on the TV attached to the media center PC.
I got accepted for beta testing Joost a couple of days ago – still a bit rough around the edges in the user interface department but once you get to watching a program the quality is amazing – still can’t believe they can stream full screen (not sure if it’s high def but it looks like it) with hardly any start up delay. Every day they add more content. I ilke being able to choose when to watch any show, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to go back to watching ads after using MCE 2005 and skipping over ads for the last couple years. Maybe they’ll do something like skype and have have ad driven always free, and some premium pay for content with no ad’s.
David
It’s slowly getting easier and easier to simply use a TV as another way to view content stored on a computer. Streaming media boxes (Apple TV is the big one in the news right now, but there have been several over the past few years) allow you to get content off of your PC and on to your computer screen, even without a “media center” PC. Combine this with TV shows readily available and automatically downloaded via RSS feeds, and you’ve got a system that pulls in your favorite shows as soon as they’re available, and you can watch them commercial-free whenever you’d like, without worrying about the TV schedule.
Combine this setup with a PVR, and you can watch pretty much anything you’d like, whenever you’d like.
I have to agree with Andrew in my case. I simply don’t have time to watch my favourite shows when they are on and I do have some excellent TVs in the house. But when it comes down to it, having a computer in the house automatically download my shows so I can watch them on my laptop either later in the day when it’s convenient or take them with me the following day as I have my laptop with me most of the time, just can’t be beat!
I haven’t watched ANY of my prime time shows on an actual TV in almost 2 years! The only thing I’m missing is local news (which I get from radio when in the car) and sports (which I can still get high lites of online).
And another great point made is that being a Canadian, we get “rejected” by many networks such as HBO, however the internet keeps me in the loop with TV downloads!
The world we live in is a changing…