Very interesting anecdotes, but I don't see how it shows that TV is "broken", other than OP's daughter thinking it was broken when first exposed to commercials. Additionally, Hulu / Hulu+ and streaming shows directly from a network's exposes you to as many commercial breaks (albeit shorter) as watching a show on cable.
In these contexts "broken" is referring to the general collapse of assumptions and desires underpinning a business model as new forms of communication become prevalent.
Think of newspapers and how their business model broke when Craigslist wiped out their classified ads market.
Tomorrow, Hacker News will be discussing a story about a 14 year old boy who discovered that some rats prefer raspberries.
If you'd like to discuss something else, try using a different web site, that will also be discussing one and only one story.
TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch something you missed.
People buy devices to mask these problems, but they really don't solve them.
Hulu is slightly less broken. Netflix Instant Watch is even LESS broken.
> TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch something you missed.
And that is why we have a DVR. It lets you pause, rewind, watch something you missed, and the networked one in my bedroom has every episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse ever broadcast for my son to choose which one he wants.
The only "live" TV that we ever watch are sports.
The problem isn't that TV is broken. There are still good shows being made that audiences want to see.
The problem is that some people still think of TV as something that has to be watched in the moment. With DVRs the subscription is less about delivering live TV and more like a fire-hose of media. The DVR captures what you want, and you can ignore the rest. Hell, I have satellite service, and because I can get east-coast feeds, I often am able to record and watch shows much earlier than people with cable.
The upcoming "Hopper" DVR from Dish Network solves this problem in an ingenious way.
They have a feature called "Primetime Anytime" that records the entirety of primetime (8-11pm) programming on the 4 major broadcast networks (NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS) for the last 8 days.
That means you can turn on your DVR and watch anything that aired in primetime in the last week.
The way they achieve this is by silently recording the networks in the background. The DVR has a 2TB hard drive, of which about 500GB is allocated to this feature, I believe.
(Note that doing it this way also absolves Dish of having to negotiate with the networks a la Hulu.)
Right, if you miss it, you miss it. It has other flaws too - I have shows recorded on my DVR from last summer that I thought I would watch. They've sat at the bottom of the list since then.
But, when you take the subscription for what it is - the best delivery vehicle a wide variety of HD content - then it isn't bad. You just have to live with the limitation. It's not like streaming content online isn't without it's limitations.
If I missed an episode of "Top Shot" for example on History, I still couldn't see it on Hulu until the next day.
TV is "broken," because it doesn't give you the choice to watch what you want to, doesn't let you pause, doesn't let you rewind, doesn't let you watch something you missed.
Not sure your market or cable company. But in Berkeley (and SF) with Comcast under on-demand I have a section called "TV Shows", the "All Shows" section lists about 300 TV shows.Each with about 8-20 episodes. All On-Demand all with rewind, pause etc. The exception is it won't let me FF through the limited ads embedded in the streams.
Assume this was all current content. How much would you pay for this service? With Ads? Without? Because its not anywhere near the $10 price you're paying now for Netflix or Hulu.
I've got no problem paying $40 for a season pass of a show I like on iTunes. I think I'd be happy to pay that via Comcast too, if they had a decent interface. (I am however _not_ willing to pay $9.99 to watch a 5-year old movie "on demand". Not worth it)
The part that the cable companies don't get is that customers don't want a buffet. They want a la carte.
And they want pricing that is related to the value of a movie or a show. I don't mind paying premium price for something that's still out in theaters. But once that's gone, drop the price, will ya?
Really? I think the 40 dollar pass is outrageously expensive. If I subscribe to just 2 shows, I've already gone over what I pay for cable. Sure, it's really nice to be able to watch it whenever I want, but 40 dollars is nuts.
It's not ideal that you have to use a mishmash of services to get what you want when you want it. But there are multiple delivery mechanisms for a lot of popular content.
How does this mean that TV is broken? Because you can't get instant access to every show ever created? That's not a TV problem, that's a you problem. That says nothing about TV. It does point to a weakness in distribution, but there are a variety of ways to get legally content these days: over the air, cable, satellite, online streaming (Hulu, Netflix), online purchase (Amazon, iTunes), buy or rent a DVD of a season of a show, etc... all of which can be played on a traditional TV.
If you want to make an argument, argue that distribution is broken. TV as a content production industry is still doing okay.
BTW - that was a good episode of the West Wing. While it was all done in flashbacks, you get to see the history of how people came to work in the West Wing. Donna's character particularly got more interesting after that episode. But you probably don't want to watch just that episode, it was the second half of a two-parter.
...the content production industry is not doing okay, because it's working "for hire" for people who are almost exclusively interested in advertising revenue.
If the people who produce TV shows had good contracts, they could also sell me their content directly - with no middle men. Or at least, different middle men. There's no technological reason they couldn't.
I agree that you're right that it's a distribution problem.
But there's a supply of video, and a demand for video, and people standing in the way of that market. The people standing in the way are eventually going to go away.
...that's my belief, anyway. Until then, when I have money and want to watch a show, but can't, TV is broken.
Agreed. In a world where the average American watches over 4 hours of TV a day I find it hard to infer a broken system from an article by someone who doesn't even have basic over-the-air stations hooked up.
Now that's not to say that the cable industry has it all figured out, or that there isn't room for improvement. But they seem to be doing pretty well for themselves if you assume their job is "get people to watch more tv."
