Me TV: Program your own prime time
Viewers are entering the realm of custom TV, finding exactly what they want to watch, whenever they want it, wherever they happen to be.
All shows, all the time
Imagine your television set and the way you have viewed TV shows since you were a kid. Now forget about it.
America's favorite unofficial pastime--passively watching television programs broadcast to living rooms--is becoming obsolete. Previously couch-bound viewers are venturing into the realm of custom TV, finding exactly what they want to watch, whenever they want it, wherever they happen to be.
The trend began almost imperceptibly a few years ago with digital video recording services like TiVo. Today, cable leader Comcast and other industry giants are preparing for a day when all shows will be available to anyone at any time, bypassing the need for recorders altogether.
The ramifications of this burgeoning trend are almost unfathomable. Broadcast and cable networks, already losing viewers to games and other mediums, have been forced to contemplate the demise of the universal "prime time" concept. Commercials could give way to product placements and other advertising alternatives that can't be fast-forwarded into oblivion.
Beyond the economics, the most important changes will be felt at home. People can spend less time channel surfing and thus more time with their families. And rather than being force-fed inane "reality" shows or mass-media stereotypes, viewers can at least theoretically find more enlightening programming with file-swapping networks like BitTorrent and other technologies already available.
That's what David Zatz discovered when he was looking for some way to watch his favorite Comedy Central program, "
the morning subway commute through Washington, D.C. "Now I'm not stuck in front of the TV all the time," said Zatz, a network administrator in Rockville, Md., who wakes up before dawn to get to his job in Arlington, Va.
Many others are following his lead. About 8 percent of U.S. households have DVRs, according to research firm GartnerG2, but in five years, half of all homes with TVs are expected to have the recording devices. Comcast and other cable operators are shipping TV set-top boxes with built-in hard drives and charging for TiVo-like services. Microsoft has made the technology one of the key features in its Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system.
Perhaps the most surprising contributors of all are advertisers, which have gone so far as to take court action against recording services in previous years. David Simon, who felt that legal wrath as an executive at the defunct recording service RecordTV.com, knows why: "If companies don't offer what consumers want, people will just find a way to do it on their own."
All shows, all the time
Imagine your television set and the way you have viewed TV shows since you were a kid. Now forget about it.
America's favorite unofficial pastime--passively watching television programs broadcast to living rooms--is becoming obsolete. Previously couch-bound viewers are venturing into the realm of custom TV, finding exactly what they want to watch, whenever they want it, wherever they happen to be.
The trend began almost imperceptibly a few years ago with digital video recording services like TiVo. Today, cable leader Comcast and other industry giants are preparing for a day when all shows will be available to anyone at any time, bypassing the need for recorders altogether.
The ramifications of this burgeoning trend are almost unfathomable. Broadcast and cable networks, already losing viewers to games and other mediums, have been forced to contemplate the demise of the universal "prime time" concept. Commercials could give way to product placements and other advertising alternatives that can't be fast-forwarded into oblivion.
Beyond the economics, the most important changes will be felt at home. People can spend less time channel surfing and thus more time with their families. And rather than being force-fed inane "reality" shows or mass-media stereotypes, viewers can at least theoretically find more enlightening programming with file-swapping networks like BitTorrent and other technologies already available.
That's what David Zatz discovered when he was looking for some way to watch his favorite Comedy Central program, "
the morning subway commute through Washington, D.C. "Now I'm not stuck in front of the TV all the time," said Zatz, a network administrator in Rockville, Md., who wakes up before dawn to get to his job in Arlington, Va.
Many others are following his lead. About 8 percent of U.S. households have DVRs, according to research firm GartnerG2, but in five years, half of all homes with TVs are expected to have the recording devices. Comcast and other cable operators are shipping TV set-top boxes with built-in hard drives and charging for TiVo-like services. Microsoft has made the technology one of the key features in its Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system.
Perhaps the most surprising contributors of all are advertisers, which have gone so far as to take court action against recording services in previous years. David Simon, who felt that legal wrath as an executive at the defunct recording service RecordTV.com, knows why: "If companies don't offer what consumers want, people will just find a way to do it on their own."
Underground television
As an engineering student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Sajeeth Cherian came up with a technology that could transform television.
Drawing on headline syndication technology used for blogs, he created a program called Videora, which scours the Internet for specific video content and downloads it automatically.
Cherian touts his invention as a type of TiVo for the Internet that can find practically any kind of video imaginable, instead of the limited slice offered by cable or satellite companies. And beyond its immediate application, the software represents a new wave of homegrown technologies that are prodding the development of next-generation television in general.
In practice, however, people today are using Videora and other new technologies to download copyrighted TV shows--which is strictly forbidden in the United States. As a result, the television world is feeling pressures similar to those that besieged the recording industry with the Napster phenomenon. Piracy-monitoring firm BayTSP says TV shows are the
fastest-growing content on peer-to-peer networks.
A technology called BitTorrent enables people to post online links to shows, which are then downloaded quickly from other file swappers' computers. Web sites like TVTorrents.com offer the latest episodes of "CSI," "The O.C." and other favorites. Shows are also routinely available through traditional file-swapping networks like eDonkey or Kazaa.
Many popular sites offering links to films and TV shows have vanished in the face of Hollywood opposition. But others continue to risk prosecution, and their reasons go beyond viewing convenience or a simple interest in tinkering with technology. For some, the defiance is part of a movement to wrest back control
of the mass medium from government and corporate interests.
In late 2003, for example, civil libertarians were outraged when the Federal Communications Commission ruled that electronics makers had to build in technology that recognizes "broadcast flags" in digital television signals, a technology aimed at blocking online distribution of TV shows. The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation responded by calling for classes held to teach people how to construct their own digital video recorders before July 1 this year, when the ruling goes into effect.
In a digital "cookbook" available online, the group explains how to cobble together homemade DVRs from off-the-shelf PC components and free open-source software, including the popular MythTV and KnoppMyth programs.
"This is a case of the government getting in the way of something they shouldn't even be involved in," said Wendy Seltzer, an attorney at the San Francisco-based EFF. "The flags take control away from consumers and give it to the networks."
New business on demand
All over the country, bright red-and-black Comcast billboards trumpet a new kind of television: "Pick a show. Play it whenever."
This is TV on demand, cable's answer to satellite rivals and file swapping, and potentially one of the most radical transformations of television culture in decades. Enabling viewers to watch whatever shows they want, whenever they want, is already undermining the scheduled programming that has always defined the medium.
While this may sound like couch potato heaven, however, at least some traditional-television executives fear that it could mean business hell. Broadcast TV networks have long built their advertising revenue around fixed program schedules, and they have so far declined to give Comcast the rights to air their shows on demand.
This struggle is just one of the pivotal business questions facing the television industry as it adapts to a new world in which consumers have ever-greater options. New ways of watching, whether provided through official channels like Comcast or underground avenues like file swapping, threaten to undermine decades-old business concepts.
"All the new ways of delivering content will put pressure on old ways to do things differently," said Bernard Gershon, who heads the digital-media division of ABC News. "We recognize there are
Even without these technological developments, network programmers have been struggling with other major challenges. In recent years, for example, young male viewers have been abandoning prime-time TV in favor of DVDs, video games and Net surfing--depriving advertisers of a core target.
To compensate for these shifts, TV companies are trying different ways to make money, including a rising number of shows sold in DVD collections,
from "Seinfeld" to "Alias" to "24." Some network divisions are experimenting with different versions of shows released online, while others are even sending material to mobile phones in hopes that subscription charges or new digital advertising formats can help supplement the old 30-second ads.
Broadcast networks and other companies say they haven't ruled out the on-demand concept; they just need to make sure that they're getting paid. "We're not trying to be Luddites, but we want to be sure that there is an Internet business model that works," National Association of Broadcasters spokesman Dennis Wharton said.
Comcast, in the meantime, isn't waiting around. The cable giant says it expects to show more than a billion on-demand streams this year, adding that the two-year-old operation has actually helped increase the number of people watching scheduled programming. "What we're doing here is evolving digital cable from just being about more channels to delivering TV on your terms," said Page Thompson, Comcast's general manager of on-demand services.