The Quickening: The end of television?

Let me tell you about a situation I’m very sure happens to you: the television offer seems to me, well, little less than pathetic: cheap and poorly performed soap operas, movies that have already been broadcast a million of times and very bad reality shows. Anyone with half a brain will feel that they’re about to lose you just after sitting down to watch five minutes of one of these shows.

Even in cable, sometimes we get something right; without a doubt, they have a higher quality of programming, and if you’re fortunate to have HBO, you’ll see movie billing programs, but then why does this even make us so ... poor? (keeping the respective proportions between pay systems and open television)

To entertain ourselves, we use the resource to search for other types of programs on the Internet. It doesn't seem like anything new for a 24/7 connected generation, but what we see as a common practice is changing the entertainment industry paradigm.

All shows are produced with a segment of population in mind: adults, children, teenagers and others, and the income from these programs comes from the time sold to advertisers, and depending on the audience, advertisers will depend: a whole jeu d 'enfants, and anyone can understand that mechanics.

The Internet has provided a space for talented people (actors, comedians, musicians, writers, producers, directors, etc...) to put their own material in view in ways otherwise they couldn’t achieve before: sketches programs, authors who upload their sagas chapter by chapter in writing sites, review shows of movies or videogames, among other styles that are more... tv look-alike.

The audience is so divided that most people won’t waste their time seeing things that don’t really call their attention or their interests; women or men, adults or children, these segments have been obsolete for some time, and many publicists and executives had already taken action, but technology has simply surpassed them.

The segments could soon be a thing of the past (at least in the entertainment industry) and new trends will be guided by interests: You like European movies? There you have material for you. RPG video games? You will also find material French comics? The same: every interest or hobby has its room.

These interests are often somewhat obscure and the number of fans is smaller, which means the potential market for advertisers may not be as profitable, but it’s better than the alternative option: television, which continue to lose audience and the message that wants to be listen reaches less and less people. The markets have dispersed.

Also, Internet content is a huge motive: TV channels are often subject to certain practices and standards that they can’t break, which causes to sometimes be censored or else, too "safe". Some contemporary shows have dealt with some controversial topics, but in general, they don’t have the easiness that an Internet show has, where you can talk, discuss, mock, parody and humiliate every possible and imaginable topic, including yourself.

According to the communications technology this is only going up, yet the question remains: Will there comes a time when television (at least, the television model we know today) becomes completely irrelevant? And perhaps the strangest thing of all: Does anyone care?