Sunday, June 5, 2016

How has the internet changed the way people watch TV?


Over the past ten years the way someone watches television has changed drastically. Originally you would have to catch whatever game, show, or movie that was on TV you would have to be there exactly when it was scheduled to air. If you missed it's air time you would have to wait hours or even days for that show or movie to be re-ran.

Eventually different recording methods were developed to record live tv. I remember when we were little and if we wanted to watch a show like American Idol or something else that would only show when it is live you would have to set the VCR to record at whatever time that show was going to be on. If the show ended up ending after the scheduled time you often missed sections of it because the tape cut itself off. Along with that issue if you chose to record something with a VHS you would not be able to watch another show at the same time. So even if you had two shows that aired at the same time you would still have to pick only one.

The next version of tv recordings were DVR that would be built into a lot of cable providers boxes. Many of these DVR's still worked like a VCR where you could not watch another show if you were already recording one. The main difference however was that you would not have to load a cassett into the tape recorder. Soon DVR's became more advanced to the point that you could record a show and watch one at the same time, or now to the point where you can even record more than one show at a time.

Today you don't even have to bother recording a show or game if you are not going to be home when it is going to air live. You can now watch those shows on demand on your tv at home or even on your mobile computer, tablet, or phone.

This has changed the way that many shows advertise themselves. Now these shows and companies don't focus all of their advertising and money on tv commercials but instead on ads on the computer and on phones. This is because viewers watch shows on the go much more often.

This has led many networks to start offering their shows through their own applications on different mobile platforms and on their own website. Networks that don't do this are appearing to lose a lot of their viewers because so many people are not watching shows on the actual tv anymore.

I for one very rarely watch show if it is live on tv. The only thing I still will watch live is a sporting event, especially hockey. Anything else however I watch on comcast.net or on my Apple TV in my own time.


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