Will broadcast TV ever die?
Broadcast TV viewing figures are dropping year-by-year, with more and more people either switching to catch-up/on-demand or switching their attention elsewhere.*
TV shows are still regularly getting viewing figures in the UK of 7million, with peaks of up to 13million - which is worth maintaining a broadcast system for, and presumably a cost-effective use of the frequencies. I wonder at what point that stops being the case - if there were 3million people across the UK who still watched broadcast TV would that still be a good use of the frequencies? 1million?
Will there always be a mass market for Event TV - consumed the instant it appears? Or will we reach the point where it's as efficient to individually stream it to people?**
*Quite a good piece on that here.
**Protocols like BitTorrent make this kind of thing easy, of course - the more people there are downloading, the better. That kinda leaves out the "money making" side of things though...
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.
TV shows are still regularly getting viewing figures in the UK of 7million, with peaks of up to 13million - which is worth maintaining a broadcast system for, and presumably a cost-effective use of the frequencies. I wonder at what point that stops being the case - if there were 3million people across the UK who still watched broadcast TV would that still be a good use of the frequencies? 1million?
Will there always be a mass market for Event TV - consumed the instant it appears? Or will we reach the point where it's as efficient to individually stream it to people?**
*Quite a good piece on that here.
**Protocols like BitTorrent make this kind of thing easy, of course - the more people there are downloading, the better. That kinda leaves out the "money making" side of things though...
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.