
TV vs. The Internet: Who Will Win? - prostoalex
http://nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/oct/08/tv-vs-internet-who-will-win/
======
Hoista
Internet or Cable is just the delivery model.

TV is still TV irrelevant of whether the screen is your monitor or a Smart
TV... Delivery owners are also the content owners, and they playing hardball
against players such as Netflix. If you own the premium content you're not
going to give it away. People will follow where the premium content lives,
this is why Netflix etc have had to produce content.

I wrote about this stuff about a year ago across 4 posts
-[http://www.hoista.net/post/100055701637/pt-4-ad-platforms-
an...](http://www.hoista.net/post/100055701637/pt-4-ad-platforms-and-content-
distribution) [http://www.hoista.net/post/99371777282/pt-3-content-
packagin...](http://www.hoista.net/post/99371777282/pt-3-content-packaging-
digital-disruption-in-tv)

[http://www.hoista.net/post/97194595897/pt-2-content-
creation...](http://www.hoista.net/post/97194595897/pt-2-content-creation-
digital-disruption-in-tv) [http://www.hoista.net/post/95719699857/digital-
disruption-in...](http://www.hoista.net/post/95719699857/digital-disruption-
in-tv-video-and-media-and-the)

------
f2f
The internet. Really.

It's like asking "Horse vs Car: who will win?". People in 1900 may have said
"horse, of course", but we know the real answer, given time.

Oh, and by the way, 18-24 demographic is watching less and less tv...

~~~
stephengillie
"Cord-cutting" has moved past Bleeding Edge and Early Adopters. Currently,
Late Adopters are cutting their cable cords, and soon the Long Tail will be
the only cable TV market.

~~~
kordless
My son is 21 and only has cable at the apartment.

~~~
nickonline
I'm 28 and haven't had an antenna plugged into my TV since moving out of home,
what's your point?

~~~
kordless
I meant to type Internet, but said cable. My point was actually supportive.

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strommen
Ther internet is a _looong_ way from winning.

When I turn on my cable TV, there is always something playing - instantly.
When I change the channel, whatever is on the other channel is now playing -
instantly. My TV always works - it never buffers, shows glitchy video, or
requires a page refresh (or god forbid a reboot).

I've been watching TV on the internet for 5+ years, and it still hasn't
overcome these basic quality issues. Until it does, there's no way that it
will put a real dent in cable/satellite usage.

~~~
InclinedPlane
That facilitates people who want to watch _anything_ right now and don't care
what it is. But for people for whom consuming video content is just one of the
things they do with their free time and who choose what to watch ahead of
time, those are not benefits.

Not being suitable for "couch potato" viewers isn't a competitive
disadvantage. People under 30 don't watch TV conventionally much any more, and
as old people ... ahem ... go away, fewer and fewer people will care about
conventional television.

~~~
vidarh
I notice a very distinct difference there between my son and I. I will say
"let's turn on the TV". He'll say "I want to watch X".

The concept of just switching on the TV and zapping is something that just
does not exist for him.

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jonpaine
For clarity, stating the difference between the two is beneficial. "TV" is a
single-channel system, in that the user has a single input to control their
output: which channel. 1:1. "The Internet" has a much broader range of
control, simply by the mechanism of processing input before sending output. No
longer is input:output 1:1.

Honestly, I'm disappointed this even made it to the front page. "who will win"
TV vs internet is no longer a legitimate or interesting question. Unless we're
having a business or politics discussion about industries lobbying their way
to success, there's is no room for rational disagreement about who will win.
The internet will continue to cannibalize TV from the bottom up (or the top
down if you want to go by ratings).

I had a Diamond Rio pmp300 32MB mp3 player in 1998. An iPod didn't come out
for 3 years. An iPhone didn't come out for 9 years. Even though the Diamond
only held 8 songs, I knew the SECOND I hit play that every other mobile audio
technology was dead. It was just a matter of time.

I think sometimes - subconsciously - we believe too much in the efficient
market - that if we see an opportunity for arbitrage that WE must be wrong -
the market must have already accounted for it. But that's just how things
work... sometimes very obviously correct concepts take awhile to actually take
hold.

TV already lost. It will just take the world a few years to realize it.

~~~
mdpopescu
_TV already lost. It will just take the world a few years to realize it._

This remainds me of Clay Shirky and his "the future of print remains what?"

[https://medium.com/@cshirky/last-
call-c682f6471c70](https://medium.com/@cshirky/last-call-c682f6471c70)

------
InclinedPlane
Not long ago I found a quiz which purported to measure how much of a
"millenial" the test taker was, ultimately it boiled down to three main
characteristics of "millenials", one of which was whether or not they watch
TV. Younger people just don't watch TV conventionally much any longer. They
may watch TV shows, but they do so using computing devices and the internet,
not cable or broadcasts. The internet will only get better for that, and
people will increasingly be abandoning conventional TV service.

More so when you consider that more and more of the highest quality and most
popular video content has shifted away from the traditional model of regularly
aired shows and schedule based content consumption to more plot driven content
that is designed more for on-demand viewing. The shows people are watching the
most and talking about the most are increasingly of the type that have fewer
episodes per "season" and are more story driven. And many of the most popular
shows today are only available online (House of Cards, Daredevil, House of
Cards, Narcos, Sense8, etc.)

A lot of teens and younger folks aren't even watching traditional television
style content. They're watching "streamers" and other video content on
youtube. As they get older they may start watching more episodic content but I
doubt they'll magically morph into traditional couch potatoes. That era is, I
think, firmly in the past.

------
LargeCompanies
Once I found Edonkey2000 and then BitTorrent way back in the day (2003) I
started watching less Cable and TV in general.

Though it took a ton of time to download content back then....content I would
organize and really never watch a lot of. That got old after awhile and then
YouTube and the other streaming sites came online. THe best one was
Justin.TV.... marathons of your favorite shows running 24/7.. whenever you
wanted to watch. There are some sites still online now, but nothing with same
catalog Justin.TV allowed on their site via the DMCA.

Either way and as to many here Cable TV is the dodo bird and going that way in
the next five or so years for all demographics!

------
mirimir
I can no longer tolerate TV. Using the Internet has made me a control freak.
Even with buffering etc, the TV user interface is primitive.

------
werber
In the past month I started watching the programs Difficult People & You're
the Worst. One made for Hulu, the other for FX. And to be perfectly honest if
I was blind taste testing and had to peg which one was which, it be a shot in
the dark. Also, haven't cable boxes just been really crappy computers for
years?

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EGreg
Kidding right? I stopped watching TV 8 years ago. Who wants to make an
appointment to watch a show? Tried cable for a few days because Cablevision
insisted... canceled it two days later.

~~~
joezydeco
You should try a DVR. They're magic once you get used to it.

------
jeffeharper
This synopsis of Michael Wolff's book is so far off the mark, it seems Mr.
Weisberg missed the point. I found the book to be far more nuanced,
intelligent and provocative than the Mr. Weisberg would have you believe. And
I'm someone who's heavily invested in the idea that the eponymous Internet, in
terms of the battle royale mentioned in the headline of this post, will win.
Of course, when it's put that way, I think Michael Wolff would agree.

The "Television" Wolff refers to is the business, not the device. Or as Wolff
states:

"TV the business model derives revenue from content pushed through a
distribution network also called 'TV.' The health of the distribution channel
is a vastly different issue from the health of the businesses using it.

"Of all the bets to make, perhaps the least safe one--and the bet underpinning
digital's hopes of grabbing a meaningful piece of television's revenues--is
that people will stop watching TV, even if they stop watching THE TV."

What Wolff is addressing is the argument that YouTube and Facebook could kill
the industry creating "professionally made, scripted narratives." His argument
is that YouTube and Facebook's business models are essentially selling
advertising and nothing attracts advertising dollars nearly as well as high
quality, professionally produced content. User generated content, on the other
hand, will never have the same value to advertisers in large part because
there is just too much of it. If YouTube and Facebook want to grab a piece of
TV's revenues, then they need to get in the Television business--or more
precisely, in the business of creating exclusive professional, scripted
narrative content. In doing so, they'll help fund the existing institution
consisting of writers, directors, producers and actors that are currently in
the Television business.

Michael Wolff sees cord-cutters dropping cable television in favor of Netflix
as proof rather than an anomaly. "Digital Convergence," Wolff states, "turns
out not so much to be about bringing computing to your television but about
bringing more television to your television." After all, when Netflix needed a
break-through television series in a competitive landscape that was becoming
increasingly commoditized, they turned to well known and well established
Hollywood talent in the form of David Fincher and Kevin Spacey. Netflix, a
tech company, became a traditional stodgy television company.

Wolff's ideas around bundling are incredibly provocative and worthy of
discussion. To him, the current iteration of cable bundling is inevitably
doomed. And what will replace it? Different, more efficient, more transparent
bundles. After all, aren't Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO Go and Sling their own
forms of a bundle?

Regarding the cable companies, they of course own the high speed connections
necessary to receive the new form of Television. It turns out that they will
be just fine as well.

Bottom line, Television is the New Television is a challenging read. You'd be
wrong to dismiss it for being the same old story where the horse has already
left the barn. If you can digest the nuance and complexity of his argument, I
think you'd agree it's a little ahead of it's time even if it sounds at first
like anything but.

