Friday, January 26, 2007
TV: obsolete before HD has caught on?
With Channel4 and the BBC both advancing steadily into internet distribution of TV content, and with YouTube continuing to provide the moving-image entertainment required by a whole generation, and with the BBC's plans for a virtual world in the style of Second Life (complete with 'TV' programmes), you'd be forgiven for thinking TV as we know it is doomed. And if Joost, a new peer-to-peer TV delivery system takes off, living room layouts all over the world (okay, the western world) will have to be reconsidered... Given that the creators of Joost were involved with KaZaA - which you've probably herd of - and Skype - which you have definitely heard of - it's got more than a good chance of changing the world.
It's true that in the digital world audiences are becoming more and more fragmented; by definition, personalised content can't be delivered to huge audiences, after all. To suggest that TV is not going to last is a fairly daft thing to propose, though. 30% of homes are still watching terrestrial TV, and official statistics suggest in early 2006 almost half of homes didn't have internet access. What do these people do with their time?
It's true that in the digital world audiences are becoming more and more fragmented; by definition, personalised content can't be delivered to huge audiences, after all. To suggest that TV is not going to last is a fairly daft thing to propose, though. 30% of homes are still watching terrestrial TV, and official statistics suggest in early 2006 almost half of homes didn't have internet access. What do these people do with their time?
// posted by Gavin Luhrs @ 8:45 pm 
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