What You Want, When You Want It

The internet is making television obsolete. If I want to watch Lost, I can turn on the television at 10 p.m. on Wednesday night (or whenever the hell it's on), or I can log onto abc.com and watch it whenever the hell I want, without even having to sit through most of the commercials. We are no longer held hostage to the network's schedule. It's an even better situation for March Madness, where your local television station only shows one of the four games going on simultaneously. Interested in watching mid-major darling Butler play against Maryland while some suit at CBS headquarters insists the Boston station show the Louisville-Texas A&M game? It's not a problem. Just log onto cbssportsline.com. The game's on a 30-second delay and you don't get the crawl of other scores across the top of the screen (though you can just check them on the internet anyway), but in all other respects, it's the exact same telecast, announcers and all. Freedom is great.


The television industry has a ways to go until it fully embraces the new technology. Right now, it has settled on an awkward compromise where only certain shows are available online, notably reality shows and serials (Survivor, Heroes, 24), while other fan favorites cannot be seen on the internet (The Office, The Amazing Race). In order to preserve a stream of revenue, the online feeds has commercials through which you can't fast forward, but given that the average online feed has three minutes of ads, compared to sixteen on the old-fashioned tube, you can't really complain. It's great for the viewer, but I can't see how it's great for the network. To my dismay, they are missing out on all sorts of ad revenues, so if they want to keep up this service, they either need to severely limit the shows available or (gasp!) charge a fee for the ability to watch. Picture and audio concerns notwithstanding (and internet service reliability as well, if that's an issue for you), there are only two reasons why anyone would watch real TV: time-sensitive programs like American Idol, and those few "water cooler" programs that everyone else will be talking about the next day. Otherwise, take away my TV and leave me my computer, because I won't need anything else.