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Mon May 25 23:33:34 2009
TV Shows are Dead
Say goodbye to the TV series...

The peak of the art form.
Image courtesy of NBC

I'm not the best person to make predictions about TV shows, since I don't actually watch any. But even someone who only watches other people watch TV shows can see a few trends:

There are a lot more TV channels now then there were 10-20 years ago.
There are a lot more TV shows out there.
People are spending more time on the Internet.

This is an interesting paper, covering how TV has evolved over the past 30 years. Some of the stats:

The number of TV stations in the US doubled between 1975 and 2004 (mostly due to the growth of cable).
Most TV stations operate with a 15-40% profit margin (!)

Then, this paper, which as far as I can tell covers leisure time in the Netherlands, notes that TV viewing per week grew a lot from 1980 - 1990, but was mostly flat after 1990 (although still growing!). According to that, people spend from 11.5 - 17 hours per week watching TV. Wow.

However, time spent on the PC or Internet grew from basically zero in 1980 to over two hours now. Also, it grew the most among the 35-54 year olds, so the people watching the least TV (11.5 hours per week) were also the demographic spending the most time online (2.1 hours per week).

And finally, this presentation (why is it North European countries measure their leisure time so well?) has some great data. Namely, their "Time spent on media, population 12+" graph, which shows:

Time spent watching TV, in hours per week, has declined sharply between 2000 and 2005. People watch less TV now than they did in 1990!
PC + Internet time has steadily climbed, and is still on a sharp ramp up. Their graph shows an average of 4 hours per week.
Time spent reading books is more or less flat from 1975-2005.
Time spent listening to the radio is down hugely, from almost 2 hours per week in 1975 to around 30 minutes now.
Newspapers and Journals have declined (as measured by how much time people spend per week with them).

I see the future of TV shows.
Image courtesy of BenFrantzDale (wiki)

So the summary: people are spending more and more time online, and less with other media--except maybe books. And it's a double-whammy for TV networks, since there are more of them competing for less of peoples' time.

What does this mean for TV shows? At the moment, TV shows are hitting some rough times. All that sells on the networks is reality TV such as American Idol or Survivor. Other good shows such as Firefly get shut down due to poor ratings (I'm not a Firefly fan but I know many people who were disappointed when the series was cancelled--and I think it was better programming than most shows out there! But I didn't help Joss Whedon any, since as I said, I'm not really a TV watcher). The TV execs are wondering what sort of programming will save them.

Probably nothing will save them! TV series will go away, and in 5-10 years we won't watch them. Why?

Everything will be online. There is absolutely no reason to watch anything on TV except for live telecasts such as sports. Watching online gives you as good or better resolution. Most importantly, you can pick when you want to watch the show, and you can pause and play whenever you want. Your viewing schedule isn't tied to the network's broadcast schedule.

I don't think syndicated shows (that is, shows consisting of multiple episodes) will go away. But the medium will change, and TV will be left behind.

Here are my predictions:

TV shows will be made more and more by independent producers. It will start with YouTube, and get more sophisticated as experienced TV producers shift to the new medium.
Broadcast timeslots will go away. Instead, TV producers will announce when the next episode is available for download. If you really want to watch your TV show right away, you can watch it right as it becomes available. TV producers (and the services that host their content) may continue to stagger release times, just as they do now, just to keep load down. (For instance, they wouldn't want to release all new episodes of all shows to the world at the exact same time.)
Networks go away. Instead, you (as the viewer) will pay either the producers directly, or websites that accumulate and host the content.
DVD revenue will disappear (and that includes Blu-Ray). Why pay for DVDs or Blu-Ray discs when you can download your shows whenever you want? It's the same model that is making the distribution of movies complicated.

I have no idea what the new revenue model will be. Everything driven by product placement? Companies will fund high-quality shows in exchange for regular advertising?

Most likely, the revenue model will consist of websites that pull content from the producers of the shows, and add targeted advertisements to viewers that want to download.

So TV shows will start to fade into history. People will soon talk about the hot new Internet show they're watching instead. You heard it here first! (Especially if you're from Denmark, since I know you read a lot of blogs in your leisure time).

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