I watch TV mainly via DVR. Being able to record 4 things at once means very rarely do I have to follow the schedule the TV tries to impose. I'm watching Saturday Night Live right now (Seinfeld doing "Really? with Seth Meyers), which was on while I was asleep last night. When I'm done, I'll watch the new Simpsons and Family Guy which are actually on right now. I don't watch too much—I try to stay active while out of work so I don't start becoming lethargic—but in a given week I catch House, 24, Good Eats, Lost, Supernatural, Burn Notice, and Caprica. That's a lot lower than the national average, but it's a lot for me.
Where is TV going? Online. Be it free w/ advertising a la Hulu or pay to rent like Netflix, the usefulness of "tune in this Thursday" has already gone the way of the dodo. That's part of the reason the US has to really step it up with a national broadband initiative because we don't have the telecom infrastructure for 70 million homes downloading three shows and an HD movie at once.
That reminds me, I'm going to be trying out Netflix online as soon as I remember to call AT&T to speed up my internet to 24 gigabits a second (about 3 GB/s).
|