subject: Future of Television [print this page] Future of Television Future of Television
Today two main tendencies take place in the world of television. The first one is replacing the analog technology of broadcasting by digital television. The second one is the moving from television to Internet. Both are not so pleasant for the operators of traditional TV and actually lead to the end of analog TV era.
There are plenty of reasons to move to the digital TV instead of the analog television. First of all, the resources of analog TV nearly ran out. Even if there is a will or need to develop it, it is simply impossible. Silent movies were once replaced by modern sound films, later black and white movies became the thing of the past, when colored ones appeared. In the same way it's time for analog TV to be replaced by the modern digital television with great possibilities and prospects. The idea of this change is completely supported by most of the European population. It is seen in the tendency of using analog TV less and less each year. There is probably a number of its devotees but they would in the end have to face the expense problem. It sounds as a paradox but analog TV is likely to become more expensive than digital one. Old equipment is gradually removed from production and it will be more and more unprofitable to support it. The TV audience gradually moves to the Internet. The reason is quite obvious: the product of the broadcast channels is too average. Young active audience is absolutely uninterested in it. The possibility of choice attracts them to the Internet.
IBM Institute for Business Value held a global research of people using media.It is based on surveys of 2,800 consumers across six countries (UK, USA, Australia, Germany, India, Japan) and one-on-one interviews with people of age 13 years and over. The results showed that traditional television is rapidly replaced by online video. 76% of interviewees stated that they do watch online TV (compared to 27% last year). Almost a half of them (45%) watch it regularly (at least several times a month). 32% watch it on their cellphone or other device. 55% show the general interest to mobile video content already. According to the research among those who watch online video 15% stated that they had started watching television a little bit less, and 36% watch television considerably less now. After the explosive growth in online and digital media formats consumers don't spend so much time in front of their TV sets. The research showed that television is no more the main source of media. Digital content is widely consumed from the computers and mobile devices. Interactive services are also extremely popular. These are voting, downloading video and many other services which were not long ago available for experienced users only.
But Internet is not likely to kill television at all. When cinema appeared many people said that it would kill theatre. But it didn't. In the same way there would always be the television audience remaining. Besides, new technologies of interactive television would definitely conquer new fans.
