Sunday, October 28, 2007

TV is Dead Channel 4

One can see from earlier posts I attended debate TV is dead at Channel 4. It used the programme TV is dead as a discussion point you can now see part of the programme on Youtube. The idea of brand or channel idents is one worth thinking about !

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I know that these people have asked the teenage market why TV has shifted and is now getting phased out… And they have all said the same thing - they do not want to be treated like a mass. This is true, but how did this happen?

Well, if you really want to point the finger then the real reason that all of this has happened is because of the BBC and the TV Licence. The trend of not watching TV began at University and made and spread from here. Most students were not going to pay for a TV Licence, so would either not bother with a TV or watch it illegally. Those who did watch it may have got caught. And if they did get caught then this would infuriate them further. As a result this pushed the TV revolution that now exists today.

Students were not watching TV at university as they were not able to without having to pay, and so they began to find other things to do - with the only other source of entertainment they had; their computer. They began logging onto places like facebook, myspace etc, and then found that they were able to download films and watch them from their computer as a source of entertainment. Soon sites like tvlink and alluc came about and the word soon spread that you could watch your favourite TV shows on your computer. People then began to realise that they no longer had to wait to watch the next episode and could download a whole series if they wanted. They soon realised they no longer need television.

The word soon spread throughout the student world and soon made its way out to all teenagers and young people.

Before you know it, everyone is online doing it. And who is to blame for this shift? THE BCC and the TV Licensing. If they had not been so pushy on students then I don't think this would have happened as quickly as it has.

The younger generation do not want to pay for watching the BBC when they can bypass the BBC all together (especially when most of them only watch it for Eastenders, and so feel like they are paying to just watch that). People get irritated by commercials and do not want to put up with breaks whilst they are watching something. This isn't new, as people have always been switching the channel while breaks come on and then putting it back when they are done (especially males).

If TV wants to survive, it has really got to up its game. It needs to place commercials in-between programmes and not in-between a programme. It needs to become fully interactive to allow people to watch their favourite shows when they want and as often as they want. It really comes back to being treated like a mass. The TV needs to really treat a person as an individual and have a memory. People have too much choice, and so television needs to be able to look at what people watch and then store that and record the user’s likes and dislikes. It should be able to recommend programmes to the user based on its preferences. If the television was able to do this then it would be providing a service that the internet cannot perfrom at the momment. This would be one step in bringing TV back to life.