Television - A Dying Medium

A recent survey has found that online viewing of videos has doubled in the last three years, outstriping the growth in social media usage and reflecting the growth in availability of broadband internet in homes.

There is a trend, mentioned in the report on this survey, that people are starting to watch television programs online more often. While online availablility of programs is not yet to the point that TV can be replaced among the general population, nevertheless, it is a trend that is not going away. And will be a reality sooner rather than later.

Already some people have cancelled their cable subscriptions (I know this anecdotally but haven't seen a study on it yet)and are using their computers to view their favourite programming. Many of the networks are archiving their programs and of course they can be viewed at any time. CBC, for example, archives The National, and various of its other programs. National Geographic and Discovery channels, as examples, contain a lot of archived material. Archiving sonds like real old stuff, but in reality the archiving is often done the next day, and sometimes even in real time.

Numerous websites are popping up that offer TV viewing, such as Hulu and TV Anywhere. These are backed by TV Networks, meaning the networks see the writing on the wall.

Since the beginning of the internet revolution, we have been predicting a convergence of technologies. Convergence of TV and the internet is the next big step. IT's interesting to speculate whether what comes out the other end will look more like TVs or computers. The survey is reported on in Internetnews.com.