Arresting Development?
It’s a truism of technological change that well-established approaches are unseated only when something new arrives that offers not incremental progress, but a tsunami of advantages that together outweigh the incumbent’s inertia. One great example is the CD: it’s more durable than an LP, it’s far more portable, you can easily skip to or shuffle tracks without juggling a fiddly needle, and (in most cases) it sounds better. The original Napster is another archetypical illustration of this phenomenon: unlike CDs, you could obtain individual tracks (as opposed to full albums), you could choose from a far larger selection than any bricks-and-mortar store… and, of course, it catered to our hitherto unrecognized desire to shop from home in our underwear. (And it was free, though I’ve always argued that the impact of this particular point has been exaggerated.)
We’re now seeing the same factors at work in the TV realm. Direct download of TV shows obviously frees us from the constraints of broadcast schedules. It holds the promise of access to a much wider selection of content; rather than see Federer massacre another hapless opponent in next year’s Wimbledon final, maybe I’d prefer to watch McEnroe and Borg duke it out again in their classic 1980 match up. But there’s much more to do it than that, as this excellent article on the Lost Remote blog points out.
Direct download opens the door to a wealth of new business models beyond hackneyed advertising-supported broadcast. The central premise of advertising-funded TV is that successful shows have to cater to the lowest common denominator, which explains why HBO (financed by subscribers) probably produces more quality content than all the major broadcast networks together. I’m not as blown away by Arrested Development as some, but the fact that an innovative program with a fiercely loyal audience numbered in the millions is being cancelled for economic reasons is a perfect illustration of the inefficiencies inherent in the current system. I believe firmly that more flexible and transparent mechanisms will lead ultimately to much better television.
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