TV is Dead, Long Live the New TV

Maybe you hadn't noticed, but gee there's a lot of television programming on the interweb now. Between YouTube and Hulu I never watch conventional television anymore. When our area recently converted to digital TV, we lost our ABC feed completely. Normally this would not have even registered, but since we'd invited friends over for watching the Oscars, it was crucial. We switched back to analogue just for the evening. We used to have Direct TV but ditched it about a year ago when it was evident that we had better things to do. Why pay $75/month for nothing? So as a backup we got the digital converter box. We've barely used it.

Harry Shearer's Le Show this week talked about the DTV conversion and it got me thinking about how my own viewing habits have changed completely in just 2 years. Before, I watched more DVD's or on-demand cable than TV. When I moved, I ditched cable in the process and watched even less television. I listened to the presidential debates on NPR or watched live on CNN on my laptop. I watched the Inaugural in a room full of strangers at a MoveOn.org event in my neighborhood via video projection. The last time we had the TV on at home was for the Oscars.

Now when I hear about shows from my friends, I figure I can catch them online or on DVD from Netflix when I want to see them. The idea of rushing home to see a TV show, or even carving regular time into my life for watching TV seems crazy to me now, though we've all done it in the past. Remember "movies of the week"? Television was an "event". I supposed I've saved money by not having a Tivo device. Why would I need one now anyway when the Internet IS my Tivo?

I'm making a list of things I want to see on my new TV: old shows I never saw or missed somehow (thirtysomething, 21 Jump Street) shows I've lost touch with but want to catch up to (The Tudors). I like that I can choose to see what I want, when I want. And frankly I'd like to be able to search for programming in a Google-like search engine, maybe coupled with IMDB, so I can find all the 21 Jump Street episodes I never saw Johnny Depp in. Or any number of those BBC costumers of classic literature with great character actors in them who are big stars now (Hugh Laurie). I know they're out there somewhere.

In conversation with a friend the other day we were discussing marketing and television. It suddenly dawned on me that there now exists an infinite number of "channels" available for viewing - that anyone with a webcam and Itunes can become a TV programmer. Perhaps there will be websites like blip.fm which will allow me to veejay my own channel lineup. Efforts to market our creative content will have to reach out to those channels with the most viewers or those who have the viewers that will best spark to our product. Conventional TV is dead. We are the new TV.

Thanks to Kevin Steele's Flickr photostream for the photograph of the TV and recycling bins.

What's next?

Things seem very slow in town work-wise. Makes getting on a pilot look like a cake-walk. The TV shows seem to be staffed with everyone but PA's. I'm waiting to hear on a few features, but in the meantime the bills keep coming, so pragmatically speaking it looks like temping is in my imminent future.

Of course, there are the strike rumblings, but I don't think that it will actually happen. In 2001 we had the defacto strike simply because the threat was enough to panic the studios into stockpiling scripts. This trickled down and really hurt us wage slaves. I know I was out of work for a time as a result.

It may yet happen again, unless it has begun already. Or is it just part of the bell curve of the changing face of media? In 2001 the promise of TV on the internet had failed, now 6 years later we have YouTube and the Director's Guild is signing deals for internet broadcast webisodes.

Look at the Fall line-ups, so little scripted material in network TV. More reality and very few half hour comedies. More spin offs of hour long franchises. In my opinion, cable continues to stand out as the superior product generator. Maybe that's what's happening? It's been two camps, cable versus network -- each trying to eat the other. Only now there's the internet and it's gnawing at them both.

Will the internet eat the networks? Will cable eat the internet? Will the internet eat everyone and the phone companies too? And where does that leave us? The content creators and workers - those of us who actually do the things that get the stuff out there? If everyone can create content, where does that take us?