Zero TV

[Bongwater]

We have cable. But only my wife watches it. The kids will see some shows, but if they miss something, they can watch it on their tablet computers.

I for one am a YouTube junkie. What for, I'm not sure. But I can watch it any time I want.

I sometimes see Al-Jazeera news, Mongolian game shows or what the TV stations look like in Mauritania (there's only one - offline for the last several months, mostly showing some Moroccan drama or a Tuareg version of American Idol.)

I even watched the North Korean nightly news. And you don't even need to speak a word of Korean to understand what the hell you're watching. First it always begins with some fiery editorial (usually anti-American), next it's Dear Leader tours the EMPTY new hotel. I'm serious. The hotels have no guests. Which is understandable because there is also NO FURNITURE - ANYWHERE. Just one magnificently designed EMPTY room after another.....Next Dear Leader tours the new EMPTY department store. OK, there is SOME merchandise, but it's not exactly Walmart. Looks more like a contemporary art museum than anything.....Next Dear Leader sees a bunch of schoolchildren playing shockingly complex music pieces on instruments as big as THEY are. He is then serenaded by these children, to which he claps feebly and appears to say to one of his generals while pointing "You see that girl, second row, third one from the left? She sang just a fraction off key. Take her to the labor camp!".....

Internet TV is very surreal. But kinda cool. I was watching Nigerian TV the other day. The only thing I knew about Nigeria was everyone was a displaced prince and needed an American bank account number. Who knew they even had a functioning commercial sector, let alone their own TV stations?

I'm not a fan of American TV these days. It's mostly garbage that even makes North Korean news look entertaining. If I want to watch "Buttcracks of Bel-Air" or whatever new "reality" show they're trotting out, I'll catch the highlights on YouTube or Hulu......

 

[Nate Wesley]

The days of broadcast tv are numbered. People, especially the younger generations, want to watch what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. Broadcast TV can't deliver that. On-demand streaming or paid downloads can. It can deliver it commercial free. I don't think there is anything broadcast TV stations can do to reverse the trend. Networks will soon no longer need them.

Pretty much every show I watch I can get on Hulu, with the exception of Game of Thrones which I am still waiting on HBO to launch a paid streaming or download option.

The Super Bowl, the NFL regular season and playoffs, the Grammys, the Oscars, the NBA Finals, the World Series, the Daytona 500, the Final Four of Men's NCAA hoops, the [main] Presidential Debates, Presidential Election Night coverage, Presidential Inauguration Day coverage, select NCAA football matchups, various first run reality shows*.

My 'exhibit A' for why broadcast TV will still be needed: Nobody wants to wait a day or more to enjoy these.

*Included because the existence of these reality shows demand getting a profitable amount of viewers (for advertisers) watching them upon their first run premiere--which is why Fox will always put up with the shuffling judge chairs on American Idol and why CBS will stick with Survivor until its production puts it/its partners in the red. They are not going to simply move them their dot-com websites.

 

[Morgan Wick]

That's the point I was trying to make earlier.