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opinion Pages
(Room for Debate Home UPDATED JUNE 12, 2013
6:59 PM)
Streaming the Small
Screen
INTRODUCTION
Cable channels,
broadcasters and plasma flat-screens have got some competition. Streaming
services like Netflix and Amazon Prime are creating more and more original
content, featuring box office draws like Kevin Spacey, Ricky Gervais and John
Goodman. Meanwhile, a new digital antenna is promising Web access to broadcast
television. Is it time to throw out the sets? What will the next television era
look like?
Read
the discussion
The Television Will Be Revolutionized
Tristan Louis is a
technology writer and entrepreneur who is currently in charge of Keepskor, a
service that allows users to create multiplayer games on mobile devices. (UPDATED
JUNE 12, 2013, 6:59 PM)
The Internet has eaten
television up. In the past, TV offered a steady stream of live and taped shows,
either on a subsidized (advertising backed) or paid (subscription) model.
Netflix and Amazon have followed the traditional premium channel model,
offering original programming on a paid subscription basis with a small twist:
you can watch anything they offer at any time and on any device you want.
In a world where content is
consumed in either short or binge form on a variety of devices, the show is now
central and the network has taken a backseat.
Meanwhile YouTube and Vimeo
provide ad-supported user-generated short-form content. This follows the
traditional advertising-supported model while reducing the cost of production by
providing a marketplace where amateurs, "prosumers," and
professionals compete alongside each other for eyeballs in another any time and
any device model.
What has arisen is a world
where content is consumed in either short or binge form on a variety of devices,
with little regard to which network it was created for. The show is now central
and the network has taken a backseat.
If it is to survive,
traditional television will need to adapt itself to this new reality, offering
an increasing amount of ad-supported “live” content (news, sports, awards) to
capitalize on its dominance in real-time broadcasting, while granting
subscription-based access to its back catalog across many devices so that it
fits in a world where consumers are looking for a TV experience that is
personal, portable, and always on.
Television advertising
models are also about to be upended as the digital era will provide more
granular demographic and geographic data on audiences, leading to more
efficient but more price-pressured ads.
Those who can position
themselves quickly and more efficiently in this new world will thrive while the
rest of the industry will contract.
It’s a Work in Progress
David Bushman and Ron Simon
are television curators at The Paley Center for Media.JUNE 12, 2013
Television is constantly
evolving. The values of live programming and public service that informed so
much of network television in the ’50s are mostly absent from a contemporary
audience’s expectations. In fact, it seems that every 10 years or so there is a
major upheaval in what television means to most viewers: from live programming
out of New York City in the ’50s to Hollywood entertainment and variety shows
in the ’60s to socially conscious programs reflecting modern life in the ’70s
to a magazine, niche model of cable in the ’80s and ’90s to the wave of reality
television that has overtaken every network since 2000. But most people really
never have spoken of television in the abstract; they have always been more
interested in its programming.
Despite the dazzling pace
of technological change, it is our belief that content will continue to drive
viewer interest.
Despite the dazzling pace
of technological change, it is our belief that content will continue to drive
viewer interest, and thus play the dominant role in shaping the future of
television, just as it has throughout the medium’s history. Content is the
reason people rushed out in the ’40s to purchase television sets, to watch
"Texaco Star Theater" and "Your Show of Shows," or turned
to "Friends" and "Seinfeld" and the rest of NBC’s “Must-See
TV” Thursday-night lineup in the ’90s, or ponied up extra dollars for
addictive, buzzed-about cable shows like "The Sopranos" and "Mad
Men," or are now purchasing subscriptions to Netflix for "House of Cards."
The bottom line is economic viability: as much as they might bask in the glory
of offering acclaimed, award-winning shows, programmers need these shows to
work financially to stay in business, and that will be just as true a decade
from now as it is today.
Of course how and when
people watch will continue to evolve – the democratization of video on demand
is helplessly enticing – but what people watch will continue to be driven by
the quality of the content itself, just as it always has.
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