For a long, dreamlike week now, I’ve been watching the future of television.
It started when I bought a device called AppleTV, a $230 mini-computer that plugs into your television and connects, wirelessly, to Apple’s popular iTunes service.
Through this, you can buy or rent an array of television shows and movies, many in high-definition, from $2 to about $20.
But I also loaded AppleTV with a software program called Boxee (something Apple does not authorize, but does not block, either). Boxee lets you browse, though AppleTV’s wireless connection, Hulu.com, CBS.com, ABC.com, MTV.com and any number of sites that make television shows and movies available for free online.
On my 42-inch TV, without having to get up from my couch, I have watched music videos by Jay-Z, old episodes of “Miami Vice,” viral videos from the UK, “Ghostbusters,” the latest “24,” Warner Bros. cartoons, a special on the origins of the universe .ñ.ñ. the list goes on and on. It’s enough to quit my job and gain 50 pounds.
Rarely am I what the industry calls an “early adopter,” but in this case I’m a pioneer. Over the past year, two parallel tracks have developed in the world of television. One is the cable and satellite services, which offer “on demand” television shows and movies, sometimes for free, but often for a fee. These are primarily new shows; “Wall-E,” for instance, or the last two months of “CSI.”
On the other side are Internet sites such as Hulu.com, a site run by NBC and Fox, which advertised during the Super Bowl. Hulu and others let you select from a seemingly unlimited library of shows, everything from the original “Star Trek” to “Barney Miller,” with about one to four commercial breaks each.
Neither side, however, is eager for a partnership. The networks get all the advertising revenue from online shows; why share it? Cable and satellite companies, meanwhile, have a good business going with on demand; why would they give it away?
From a consumer point of view, of course, it’s a pain. While Web sites may espouse the wonders of watching shows on your laptop, most people prefer to watch another way – on their big television, in a comfy chair.
It took a little bit of expertise and a lot of patience for me to bring the two worlds together. Boxee is in the testing phase, and the quality of online shows often isn’t very good. When will things be easier – and better – for the mass market?
“I’m not sure anyone knows,” says Eric Shanks, executive vice president of entertainment at DirecTV. “I think everything is so new, it’s all just an experiment.”
Though Shanks applauds the idea of vast Internet libraries, “you have to figure out what moves the needle. Right now, as we see it, it’s not old content.” DirecTV has about 4,500 movies, shows and sports on demand, a pretty big selection without throwing open the door to the Internet and its questionable economics.
Boxee, meanwhile, has no deals to put its software on cable boxes – at least not yet. “For the moment Boxee remains for a consumer who understands technology, something we’re aware of,” says Andrew Kippen, a spokesman for the New York company. “Our goal is to make the platform easy for non-technical users later this year, and then to ensure it’s able to be plugged into their home entertainment system – via an existing device like a TV, game console” or even a set-top box Boxee makes itself.
The dilemma for those who make television shows is earning a profit from all this. If consumers aren’t paying for individual episodes (as on Apple’s iTunes), will advertisers support it?
Executives at Joost.com, which puts up shows from MTV, Comedy Central and others for free online, think so. The metrics just need to change. Advertisers will be charged less for a smaller audience, but hit very specific consumers.
“Say a brand of women’s shampoo want 150,000 views in this age demographic in the Midwest,” says Mike Volpi, Joost’s CEO. “We can deliver them exactly that.”
Or perhaps the services can charge some sort of subscription fee to offset costs – say, $10 for a month of Hulu – or bundle it with a cable or satellite company’s monthly bill.
While the details still need working out, the overall merger seems inevitable. And when it does, the way we watch TV will change in fundamental ways. Just as the expansion from three networks to a universe of cable channels fragmented the viewing audience, this will puree them into tiny, tiny shards. Just as the VCR and DVR resulted in “time-shifting,” this will make time slots irrelevant.
There won’t be a “prime time lineup,” programs will simply be posted when they’re complete – perhaps a whole season at a time. Miniseries may become popular, as syndication no longer requires 100 episodes (syndication may not even exist). How do you find out about new content? Watch one episode of your favorite show, and a dozen suggestions will pop up of other programs you might like. On Boxee, I already see recommendations from my friends, which turns an evening of television into an ADD-fueled stream of consciousness.
The upshot is, you are the network. There’s no flipping channels or setting recorders. It’s clicking to decide that “Gossip Girl” follows “Lost” follows “60 Minutes,” with a quick interlude for that homemade video from a basement in Cincinnati, or a music video from the 1970s. The future of television is MeBC.