Do We Still Need TV?

I got a phone book on my doorstep today.

I just kind of stared at it. A giant chunk of yellow paper, longer than any book I’ve ever read, full of information that I would never, ever need to access. It’s a wonder to me what something as quaint as a phonebook still exists, although “quaint” is probably not the right word as we’re murdering a few hundred thousand trees to make them and burning millions in gas to deliver them.

It’s an archaic piece of the past that for some unknown reason, still exists in our present society. It’s a combination of factors where A) I’m sure whoever makes the phonebook makes a pretty penny from those businesses who want their services featured prominently inside and B) because old people still use phonebooks, because they don’t know that you can look up any phone number for anyone or anywhere on The Google in a matter of seconds.

I’m not going to write an entire essay about the antiqueness of phonebooks, but it got me thinking about other archaic things we still have in our lives. I’m sure at one point it was wondrous to have a simple book delivered to your house with everyone’s number in it, but those days have come and gone.

The same thing goes for television. Hear me out.

At one point, it was amazing to have access to television channels all over the country. There started with two or three, then progressed to 10-20, and now today we have THOUSANDS, more than anyone could possibly ever want.

But television hasn’t changed with the internet’s arrival, or at the very least, it hasn’t changed enough. We’re still locked into “packages” that sell us groups of channels bundled together, regardless of how many we actually want to watch. It’s like going to the grocery store, but instead of buying whatever’s on your list, you shell out $80 for “grocery package” that includes a grouping of food. Sure, your milk and eggs are in there, but you also have mustard and tuna fish. And you freaking hate mustard and tuna fish, and so they’ll sit in your house unused. Want some Nestle Tollhouse cookies? That’ll be an extra $20 for the dessert pack, where you’ll get them along with mint thins and carrot cake mix. But I just wanted the damn cookies!

The same is true of TV, particularly cable TV which in this day and age still does not offer even appropriate channel packages to its consumers. They know that with the vast majority of absolute shit that populates TV, if people were allowed to only select a handful of channels they wanted access to, then they would have to charge way less, even if the customer was fundamentally watching the same programs as they would be on the old system. I might want NBC, Fox, FX, USA, CNN, Showtime and HBO, but there’s no point charging me for literally a THOUSAND other channels I want.

There are only a dozen or so programs I need to watch out of thousands.

Even though this option isn’t available, there’s a more logical one a step past that. Why not let me pick by show alone? Why would I need to subscribe to NBC for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, when all I really want is a two hour block on Thursday nights?

Before everyone starts yelling at me that you CAN do this via mediums like Hulu and iTunes, the fact is that legal online access to TV shows is still in a horrible, crippled phase. Hulu is a fundamentally good idea, but the delay from air to online is often too great, and it can be really wonky about which episodes it actually puts on there. I once remember when I wanted to get into Modern Family for the first time. I went to Hulu and they had episodes 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15 and 16. What they hell am I supposed to do with that?

Cable stays the same because of corporations and old people, neither of which like change. Looking through my guide, having 1,000 channels, where I’m paying for each and every one, seems as archaic as the phone book on my doorstep.

 

Similar Posts

16 Comments

  1. The biggest hurdle they need to clear before losing TV becomes a feasible option is how to deal with sports.

    Everything else I can find on Netflix or online. But live sports events are the lynchpin of the TV industry, along with (to a lesser extent) news programs. They have yet to find an acceptable method for distribution online – it used to be that I could live stream most of the hockey/football games I want to watch, but now some of those sites have REMOVED it, to capitalize on HD revenue.

    And this is coming from a guy who doesn’t even watch a lot of sports – just the NHL and CFL really.

  2. Sports would be handled if you just paid for the channels you wanted instead of having to buy the whole package. Paying for channels would be great since then channels will fight to get the best possible programs aired on their networks. Paying per show doesnt seem feasable though. Networks would fight that kicking and screaming. It cuts too many people out of the loop and networks would rather you watch the show on their channel instead of online. Which is why Hulu gets episodes late and usually never whole seasons.

  3. I’ve had the “I’ve already paid for it” conversation with many people when asked about downloading TV shows.

    I absolutely agree. I pay for TV, I was paying for TV when the show aired, I have a PVR, so what’s the difference?

  4. If you are living alone or with someone with very similar interests the idea of ordering only channels you want is a great idea. But where the current set up with the packages comes in handy is with families. I may only watch FX, ESPN, comedy central etc. But my dad likes to watch HGTV, TLC and other home improvement channels, my mom watches news channels and food network then my little brother watches Disney channel and nickelodeon. See? While I may only want the cookies, my mom only wants thin mints and my dad gets the carrot cake. So since we all watch a lot of tv with almost no overlap, the package system is probably cheaper than buying channels a la carte would ever be.

  5. @Sam

    True that makes sense. But they could deliever the option to some. Maybe make price breaks at like 10, 20, 30 channels ala carte style if you wish. Or you can go for the whole package. Would be cool to experiment with but then again right now you are forced to buy the whole thing so why would they give you the option to pay less if they dont have to?

  6. One idea i thought of recently was, instead of paying for having cable 24/7, why not have it “locked” during the hours you don’t watch? I don’t watch tv before 3pm, and never watch tv on weekends. So, couldn’t the bill be adjusted accordingly? Seems easier to adjust payment for everyone individually if it’s based on hours wanted, rather than CHANNELS wanted, ya know?

  7. Part of the reason TV hasn’t changed is that the format works. You can argue that it is more efficient letting you just get the programs that you want, but you loose the random factor tv offers. There have been many shows that people showed no interest in at first from reviews and synopsis but went on to be classics, one of the main reasons for this is that they would be place after or between hit shows so people tuning in to the other shows would then catch at least part of them and the show would then gain a following. Cheers and Seinfeld are good examples of this.

    In my experience TV in it’s current format is a better environment for exposure to new entertainment, while online TV offers a better was to enjoy programs that are already favorites.

    Also a phone book kept by the phone can still come in handy (and yes I still believe in land line simply because I do cellphone repair and can say land lines are like condoms better to have one and not need it than need it and not have one. Just ask anyone who has needed to call 911 but had to do a battery pull on a blackberry first)

  8. I had to stop reading at the grocery bundle just to tell you that is brilliant. One of the better analogies I’ve heard in a long time.

    Okay, now back to reading…

  9. I definitely wish you could pick and choose channels. It would make is so much easier. Yes, on occasion I might find something to watch on a channel I usually pay no attention to, but usually I just watch the channels I always watch. Also, the grocery analogy was perfect. 😀

  10. @Steve

    That’s a good idea from the consumers viewpoint, but how does that work for the cable providers? You still have a cable going into your house, and they don’t save any money themselves just because you aren’t watching the television. Do you know why cable companies only offer packages, rather than channel-by-channel offerings? It’s the same reason your suggestion could never work from the producer’s end (vs our consumer end)

  11. Your point definitely makes sense; TV is a “vast wasteland.” If Newton N. Minow, former FCC Chairman, could say that in the 1960’s, what would he say now? But your comparison to grocery stores points out a weakness in the logic of the argument.

    You say that if you only want Oreos, you shouldn’t have to buy Fig Newtons too. Therefore if you only want to watch ESPN, you shouldn’t have to pay for the Lifetime channel. That completely makes sense.

    But at the same time, you buy DO buy these products in packages. We buy a pack of 30 Oreos, not a pack of 5. When we buy things at Costco, they are in bulk quantities for a higher price in exchange for a lower per unit value. If you buy that same item at the grocery store in a lesser quantity, you will likely pay a higher per unit value. You can even take it one step further to convenient stores. The pack of 5 Oreos at the gas station is going to cost half the price of a package of 30 Oreos. Plus, how many times have we all bought a water bottle at 711 for $1 when it costs $4 for a pack of 24 bottles at the grocery store?

    The point is that you are going to end up paying for the convenience of only having a few channels. The cable companies will charge you a higher premium upfront for individual shows you pick out.

    This isn’t even including the fact that while major communications companies make a great deal of their money from subscriptions, individual production companies often produce the shows you would want to watch. Networks will order seasons of shows and then sell the airtime to advertisers.

  12. First off, let me state I’ve been living without cable TV for about 5 years. Since most of my entertainment comes from gaming over all, I don’t find myself missing cable service all that much. Especially when you factor in Netflix and Hulu into the equation. If i do miss anything from live TV it is as others have mentioned sports. Especially Hockey and Football. (Also I can’t lie it used to be nice to throw open the windows, grab a beer and relax while watching the Cubbies disappoint me yet again.) However, I’ve even found ways to quench my sports thirst as well and listen to a lot of streaming radio broadcasts. (Especially hockey, where radio is my favourite way to take in my beloved Sabres, but that has just as much to do with Rick Jeanneret the Sabres epic announcer.) Plus I can throw a radio broadcast in the background while I game so again, no big loss there.

    Outside of sports, the other thing that I do really miss about having cable service is being able to randomly discover new shows as mentioned earlier by someone else. I do find that I end up missing a lot of stuff that is supposed to be really quality programming, just because of the extra effort required sometimes to sample a new show.

    With respect to the should TV be offered A la carte I think Joe Des hit the nail on the head. Buying in bulk does over the long run save you money even if you do not watch all the content available to you. Paul mentioned, that via iTunes and other avenues it would be possible to subscribe to most shows you would want to watch, but I think ultimately if you are a heavy TV watcher the cost would come up not in your favour. What I do think that TV companies can do is learn from watching the iTunes model. What we have seen is that if you give people an easy and cheep way of obtaining the content they want they will pay for that service. (ie: Netflix or Hulu) Not everyone will, but most will. Going through Netflix or Hulu certainly must be more lucrative to the content producers then forcing those who want to see their content to go to the torrent store every week.

  13. The cable tv model is so outdated. Internet is the future.
    I have not subscribed to cable TV since ’04. Almost everything I want to watch is available on Netflix, and Hulu Plus. I have a set of “rabbit ears” for over the air HD mainly for sports. If I want to watch games that aren’t on network TV I usually head to a friends house or to a sports bar(Monday Night Football on ESPN)
    I despise the DirectTV monopoly of the NFL Sunday Ticket. Fucking NFL should let me subscribe directly.
    Seriously considering buying a PS3 just for the NFL Sunday Ticket.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.