Keep Your Eye On The Ball

arsenal-fc-team

this is what you are looking for….

I just read TV’s obituary in the newspaper this morning, courtesy of Edith Champagne in London.

The newspaper happens to be The Guardian, but the obit was very clear.

UKRAINE V. ENGLAND WORLD CUP QUALIFIER TO BE BROADCAST ON INTERNET

A media group called Perform is going to put the game on the web, and if you want to watch it you can pay £4.99. Or you can not watch it at all. It’s up to you.

Why do you need television (or cable for that matter) at all when you can watch whatever you want to watch online?

The answer is, you don’t.

There is, in fact, no reason for TV to exist at all.

It’s over.

TV is officially dead.

Many years ago,  my first business partner was a guy named Jan Stenbeck.  He was the Ted Turner of Scandinavia, and he started the first commercial TV network in Sweden, TV3.  It ran off the Astra Satellite.

Stenbeck invested a fortune in building broadcast studios, buying programming, even paying for part of the satellite. But when it was done, no one watched the channel. To do so meant you had to buy a dish and install it, and SVT, the state broadcaster was free.

So Stenbeck bought the rights to ice hockey and said, ‘if you want to watch hockey, you have to get a dish’.  People were angry, but they started screwing the dishes into their roofs.

The next year, TV3 had 90% penetration in Sweden.

If you want to know where a medium is going, follow the sports.  And in the UK, and soon in the rest of the world, it is going online.

It used to be thought that ‘live TV’ would be Television’s saving grace.  OK, you can get box sets or see programs online on Hulu, but for live you ‘need’ TV.

Apparently not.

Ironically, Rachelle Lucas writes to us this morning with this observation:

I JUST heard a funny ad that made me think of you. ABC was advertising one of their new shows and the big “announcer” voice comes on and says … “Watch it … while it is happening.” LOL! Is that their response to TiVo and DVR … don’t fast forward through the commercials, watch it “live” when it’s not even a live show? Made me laugh so I had to pass it along …

So yes.

TV is definitely dead.

It just doesn’t know it yet.

But we do.

Michael Rosenblum

For more than 35 years, Michael Rosenblum has been on the cutting edge of the digital video journalism revolution. During this time, he has lead a drive for video literacy, and the complete rethinking of how television is made and controlled. His work has included: The complete transitioning of The BBC's national network (UK) to a VJ-driven model, starting in 2002. The complete conversion of The Voice of America, the United State's Government's broadcasting agency, (and the largest broadcaster in the world), from short wave radio to television broadcasting and webcasting using the VJ paradigm (1998-present). The construction of NYT Television, a New York Times Company, and the largest producer of non-fiction television in the US. Rosenblum was both the founder and President of NYT TV, (all based on this paradigm (1996-1998). The President and Founder of Video News International, a global VJ-driven newsgathering company, with more than 100 journalists around the world. (1993-1996). Other clients include Spectrum News, Verizon and CBS News.

5 Comments
  • Rainer Hübert October 15, 2009

    I don’t know if you know about this already, but that’s just another nail to the coffin: http://make.tv/en/

    Greetings

    Rainer Hübert (Germany)

  • Tom Weber October 07, 2009

    If TV isn’t dead yet, it will be within a generation. Students in my media studies classes don’t watch TV. For the most part they don’t even OWN a TV. The only thing they watch on TV is sports, and the minute you bring sports to their laptops, they are gone.

    They have a hard time thinking outside the box, though — although we give them free rein to produce whatever content they want, a lot of their video projects imitate “old media” forms. The medium itself is dying, but the storytelling formulas live on, like religious rituals.

  • steve October 06, 2009

    i’m seeing all kinds of new cracks appearing in tv’s armor, and this michael’s example is but another.

    one by one the cliches– remember how one was termed a “lean back experience vs. a lean forward experience”.

    pretty certain it’s shaping up to be a bend over experience for tv broadcasters.

  • Michael Rosenblum October 06, 2009

    Thanks Kevin
    I say, ‘its a beginning’. It just shows what the technology is capable of.
    Sometime in the very near future, someone will buy the rights to say… the World Cup and only make it available online for pay.
    When that happens, you can say, “hey.. just like that Ukraine v. England game back in ’09!”

  • Kevin Curl October 06, 2009

    Michael,

    Just got this link from one of my staff in Europe, playing the devils advocate.

    http://retroyakking.today.com/2009/10/05/ukraine-v-england-world-cup-qualifier-wont-be-broadcast-on-british-television-but-via-internet/

    I’m pretty certain, I know what your response will be, but for the benefit of others a better explanation may be in order.

    Thanks,
    Kevin