TV Evolved?

TV sucks. Bad. The Symptoms I mean, there are actually some good shows on TV that I might occasionally like to watch, but they''re either on at inconvenient times or they''re directly opposite something else I want to watch more (eg Alias goes head-to-head with The Sopranos - and loses every Sunday, unless I decide to watch the HBO rerun on Tuesday). Show times aren''t all that''s wrong with TV by a long shot, though. TV has a definite lack of content, and no one gives you what they claim. MTV? Where''s the fscking music?! All I see is stupid reality shows and attention whoring veejays. MTV is so bad that to get the content it supposedly provides you, you need to go get MTV2! (Now what''s up with that?) BET? Actually, let''s not even go there... ESPN doesn''t show enough damn sports; it''s all talk and analysis - SportsCenter, Pardon The Interruption, Around The Horn, The Reporters, The Reporters 2. Can I see som sports? Not seven seconds of footage followed by two minutes of "analysis" and "insight" (half those fools don''t even know what they''re saying - Tim Hardaway is an analyst? Sean Avery is a fscking analyst?!) The Disease Congestion. Overcompetition. Cost. Every TV channel is trying to make money, right? But consumer attention spans have shortened over the years as more and more "content" (and I use that term in a sense looser than a $2 crack whore) vies for their time. It''s gotten so bad that even the news is sensationalized to improve ratings, resulting in the general populace being less informed as a result of watching the news! (Last year coverage of shark incidents at beaches was so high that most people thought it was the worst shark year in the last 20, except that the actual number and rate of incidents was the lowest in 15 or more years.) Fundamentally, the problem seems to be that TV channels aim at overlapping demographics, thus minimzing returns for virtually all parties, and then have the problem exacerbated by the temporal nature of the delivery medium. The Cure Cable viewers may have noticed the advent of "OnDemand" channels, allowing the user to view content at their leisure. I believe that the On-Demand metaphor be expanded to cover all of TV, which necessitates interesting alterations to the production methodology and revenue model. An idealized use case with myself as the consumer would allow me to come home after a day''s work and decide that I want to relax while watching some TV, maybe getting a little news and then catching a good game. From my SuperSpiffyRemote™ I select a news update from my preferred choice (options are categorized by region, time, subject, etc), then add a TV show or two to my playlist followed by, say, a soccer match - Juventus vs Ajax or so. I hit play and begin to unwind while moving about my living area and consuming media. Since this paradigm is analogous to consuming streaming media over the web, it''s only natural that I be able to pause, fast forward, rewind and terminate a session. Requirements Analysis: Infrastructure We already have a fair amount of the infrastructure necessary for a system like this. In essence, we have a menu service (your cable provider) which allows you to browse indices and set up customized playlists, etc, all transactions being communicated over a network analogous to mixing today''s cable networks with the internet. Ideally, the user should be able to access any program offering list worldwide, but the provider menu is an ease-of-use tool (and the first revenue-generating service after basic connectivity). As far as physical connections are concerned, our current technology is quite capable of supporting such a system. Requirements Analysis: Channels, Studios and Production A traditional TV station/channel such as FOX 24 (or whatever) would lose much of its identity since user consumption really shifts from being channel-centric to being content-centric. This empowers the studios creating the actual shows since they now are encouraged to seek non-exclusive contracts with a variety of service providers worldwide in a much more "syndication"-friendly environment. Instead, the traditional station is altered into a content producer as well, creating news reports, investigative reports, small movies and the like and being able to distribute them via mutlipe service providers to the widest coverage possible. With a system like this, it should be possible for a man in Jakarta to watch news updates from the Piedmont Triad in North Carolina, keeping an eye on how his family/friends/loved ones are faring with local, focused reporting. Studios and fledgling shows are liberated from the grip of the networks, since a small but cheap-to-produce show can continue filming even if they can only find one service provider to carry their content. This means that the choices of what shows are available are removed from the hands of the networks and placed more with the consumer. And that is a Good Thing™ Requirements Analysis: Ratings, Advertisements, Pricing Structure and Essential Bulletins Ratings are dead. They''re largely pointless self-pats on the back and means of charging more for advertising. Advertising is now a flat-fee matter between the product manufacturer/advertising agency and the service provider, and since the exact number of views can be ascertained, more efficienct billing is possible for both parties. As to the question of advertisement broadcasts, I''d go for a 2- to 5-ad block between "show segments" (which may be an entire 30-minute show, or the quarters of a football or basketball game; the specifics are yet to be ironed out). Users get billed for the content they view (and since service providers need only pay for the content they transmit - using packet-based content delivery protocols - that''s very reasonable for both parties). The charges for shows viewed should be small enough that a single billing period''s total charge is significantly smaller than current cable charges, and the amounts should be added to the basic service fee right on the user invoice. This means that if I purchase the service and only watch a 2-hour news roundup each night and one 2-hour sporting event each weekend, my overall costs are appropriately lower than an individual who consumes music videos and soap operas all day, every day. Programming updates should be displayed like advertising, at segment breaks, while essential bulletins should be overlaid in a noticeable but non-interfering (and perhaps relocatable) portion of the screen. Being a networked system, it should be possible to then follow "hyperlinks" to review the bulletin or obtain more information. The Piracy Issue If users have on-demand, instant access to whatever media they desire (essentially this TVE - "E" for "Evolved" - paradigm becomes a content delivery channel) with inconsequential per-view charges, it is questionable whether piracy will be as attractive an option since this is largely the function that services like Morpheus and KaZaa provide, except at no monetary cost to the user (the cost is in acquiring, hosting and sharing the content). I would very much like to hear reactions on this issue. Comments, please.