 Cartoon by Andy Marlette/AndyMarlette.com
A decade ago, such an outage could spell catastrophe for disciples of a show like “Lost.” The serial drama’s episodes are not meant to stand alone; if you miss one, you will likely have no idea what is happening when you watch the next one. In the late 90s, this would have sent dedicated viewers scrambling to find someone who had no service disruptions and operational VHS recorder.
In the late 2000s, such obstacles to consuming entertainment are inconvenient, at worst. Despite the fact that my wife and I have friends less than five minutes away who subscribe to another cable service and were recording the show on their DVR (even while watching the broadcast in real time), we ended up on ABC’s Web site and watched the show there. Plus, we experienced even less commercial interference than we would find in a regular television broadcast.
...record numbers of viewers are turning to the Web to watch television...CNN reports that record numbers of viewers are turning to the Web to watch television programming and movies. Services like Hulu, which is co-owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners, show full episodes of some of the most popular shows from NBC and Fox. For those who don’t want to worry with remembering the schedule for their favorite show, such services offer a viable alternative to being tied to a particular time slot or setting a VCR or DVR to record that show. And since online shows are more easily accessed, they are more easily viewed, and one might reasonably expect their viewership to grow – arbitrary cable shutdowns notwithstanding.
Nielsen Online recently released its first public ratings for online TV programs, and the top three shows, “Lost,” “Saturday Night Live” and “Grey’s Anatomy” collectively garnered more than 3 million unique online viewers for December 2008. It seems that consumers are increasingly willing to watch television programming on the Internet at their convenience, rather than when the show is aired.
Case in point: the highly anticipated series premiere of Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” on Fox Feb. 13 attracted a disappointing 4.2 million television viewers, making it the second-lowest premiere of a scripted series on a major network this season. However, by the following Monday, the episode had skyrocketed to the no. 1 spot on iTunes downloads – despite the fact that it was (and still is) available for free on Hulu (the Hulu broadcast is sponsored by Verizon). It seems that consumers do care about seeing Whedon’s latest effort, but that they don’t care about watching it on the tube.
...it seems that television producers recognize the potential of the Internet...And fortunately for consumers, unlike the music industry, which all but ignored that potential in the late ‘90s and is still playing catch-up because of it, it seems that television producers recognize the potential of the Internet as an entertainment delivery system. Now, television corporations and film companies have realized that if they want to keep up with the demands of a tech-savvy audience, they are going to have to deliver products in a way that the audience can access easily, efficiently, and most importantly, at their convenience.
In the end, the attention being paid to Internet delivery of television programming bodes well for consumers, who pay ridiculous cable fees to watch only a small fraction of available programming. While the transition won’t happen overnight, the writing is on the computer monitor: The Internet is the next logical step in the way visual entertainment makes it to our homes. Fortunately, it seems the corporations that create that entertainment realize this potential, as well.
[MySanAntonio.com, ABC, CNN, Hulu, The Live Feed, TV by the Numbers, Indy Star, MarketingVOX, Front page image by Andy Marlette]
Branden Hart, TheSequitur.com managing editor, works as an editor in San Antonio.
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