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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). Comments	Related: economics books > predictions < Unrelated: energy environment geopolitics lists mathematics science

Mon Sep 29 21:17:40 2008 Just say No Congress shuts down the bailout.
No Benjamins! Image courtesy of Dtbohrer (wiki) Well, Congress said no today. I'd like to think it was my aggressive blogging that helped stop the bill's passage. On the one hand, I think we can breathe a sigh of relief. This was a bill desperately wanted by financial institutions so they could cap their losses and dodge responsibility for their poor risk management. I still believe that the clamor of Wall Street was ringing more in the ears of Bernanke and Paulson than Main Street. This means that, if needed, that $700B can be used to help stave off a recession in other, more practical ways. On the other hand, now what? The markets didn't like the news, of course. The Dow Jones Industrial Index dropped 777 points, which, as every reporter noted, was "the largest single-day point loss in history." Interestingly, that means it wasn't the largest percentage drop. The 777 drop was 6.8%, which wasn't really close to the Black Monday (1987) drop of over 22%. Weird that they didn't mention that today's drop was less than a third as bad as Black Monday! But of course that doesn't sell newspapers. And the economic news wasn't all bad. Oil posted a large price drop, now down to a price of around $95 per barrel. Commodities holders are worried that lower demand will keep prices down. Of course, consumers of commodities are in better shape! Not that I'm getting cocky. The economy is still in for a rough ride, and there could be further negative impacts ahead. Well, what will happen now? I'm guessing that not much will happen legislatively until after Election Day. Members of Congress will be far too worried about their jobs to take a chance on a very expensive bill. The political maneuvering was excellent. President Bush proposed it, argued for it, and lost. So now he can claim a recession isn't his fault. Senators McCain and Obama did the same thing. However, we are still left holding the bag, and the government will have to step in to help keep things from collapsing. Here are my predictions: The FDIC will continue to take possession of troubled banks. I'll guess something on the order of an additional $100B, just based on what we've seen so far. The Federal Reserve will keep open its line of cheap credit to help out financial institutions that aren't complete basket cases. A few more financial institutions will collapse under their losses. The economy, and housing market, will flatten or recede for another 6 months. A 6 month recession isn't bad! I am gambling that the subprime mortgage crisis has not infected the majority of commercial banks, so the banking system as a whole will keep going. And I'm guessing that the consumer slowdown, which has already started, will continue for just a bit more. But the bottom will be reached as those firms who still have assets are able to capitalize on the situation, and risk-takers will take advantage of cheaper credit and lower prices. Comments	Related: economics > predictions < Unrelated: books energy environment geopolitics lists mathematics science

Sun Jul 27 22:41:01 2008 The S-Word Stagflation is back...
Welcome back, Carter: it's the 1970s again! Image courtesy of Tom (wiki) In The Great Stagflation of 2008 I talked about the coming of stagflation. Well, now I know it's here! How do I know? I know because the Federal Reserve is now denying we are experiencing stagflation, which is a pretty sure sign that we are. What is stagflation? It is when an economy is hit with slow growth (or contraction) and rising prices. The combination presents a problem for policy makers. What do you do? If you lower interest rates to spur growth, then you stoke inflation that just causes prices to go up more. And sometimes the higher prices cut into growth again. So cutting rates just causes inflation without growth. But if you raise rates to stop inflation (price increases), then you hurt growth because it's harder for companies to find the cash they need to expand. So now the Federal Reserve is wringing its hands about what to do. Fortunately, the answer is simple: raise interest rates. Why do I say that? Because the Fed's main job is to protect us from inflation. If inflation gets out of control, it destroys peoples' savings, and that can have catastrophic consequences. Besides, the Federal Reserve isn't really supposed to be the safeguard of the US Economy: that's the Federal Government's job. The Federal Reserve should just be safeguarding the currency. What do I think will happen? Given the recent track record, I have a pessimistic outlook. I think the Federal Reserve will continue to drift for a while, and attempt to be all things to all people as it deals with the current recession. One example is its disastrous decision to insure investment banks, which is going to cost us all a lot of money in a few years. (Incidentally, that is a fairly biased article, but worth reading for the viewpoint). We will need to hope that the Executive or Legislative branches will eventually decide to sort things out without damaging the currency. Comments	Related: economics > predictions < Unrelated: books energy environment geopolitics lists mathematics science

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