The future of TV

There's an interesting article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website called "Who Contrls Your Television"?

The basic summary of the article is that the big media companies are meeting behind closed doors and discussing some ideas that could greatly change what rights a television viewer has when watching television.

We're all aware that home viewers do not have the right to rebroadcast shows that are received in their home - this message is repeated over and over again on sports broadcasts, and is in the fine print in credits on most shows. I think it's a reasonable assumption that if I were to set up my own TV station, and basically just show exactly what some other station is showing by reproducing their signal, I'd get in trouble for that.

But now the media companies ("Hollywood studios, major pay TV providers, free TV broadcasters, and some of the largest technology companies in the world") are taking it a step further. What if your VCR was suddenly unable to record certain shows, or your DVR (i.e. Tivo) could only hold one episode of your favorite show at a time? These are the things that these companies are considering doing. You might think that it is not technically possible to do these things, but it is. And even worse, if these companies get their way, it might make your current TV equipment simply not work.

There are two main reasons that companies are doing this. The first is that when people use VCRs and DVRs, they skip over commercials. This means TV companies lose ad revenue. The second reason is that these companies see a market in reselling content after the initial air date. Miss your favorite episode of Lost? You can buy it online from iTunes. Or you can stream it for free from abc.com (if you watch the ads during it).

It's a tricky issue. TV shows depend on ad revenue for their source of income, and if it is true that ad revenue is drying up, then other revenue sources must be discovered. But this is not the way to do it.

I am not in favor of just getting rid of copyright protections, but I am a believer in that once you purchase a product, you should be able to do what you want with it, as long as it's for private use (with some exceptions of course, I'm not claiming this is a cut and dry issue). If ABC releases Lost to the world for free on Wednesday, and I can't watch it until Thursday, I think it's completely reasonable for me to record it and watch it later. The TV company needs to realize that by having the freedom to watch the show when I want also makes me more likely to be a loyal viewer of the show, which in turn means I'm more likely to see the advertisements that happen during the show (even if I skip over them most of the time).

One of the more understandable things they are trying to do is prevent the skipping of advertisements. Despite the fact that I hate the idea, at least it makes sense to me - in exchange for being able to watch their show for free, I agree to watch so many minutes of advertising. But they need to be careful - too much advertising just makes me change the channel.

All in all, the main problem is that media companies are slow to react to technological changes. Apple was able to figure out how to make money off of online music sales, but that only happened atfer many years of people trading music for free online (although the issue of Apple's use of DRM is a whole different discussion topic). Now there are new ways to watch TV, and media companies must understand how to use those new ways to their advantage instead of trying to prevent them from happening altogether.


It's going to be an interesting few years while this is all sorted out.