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I haven’t
owned a TV in over five years and for that reason, I’m apparently television
networks’ worst nightmare. Not because I don’t watch TV, though, because I
do—it’s just that I watch it on the internet.
Getting out
of college around the turn of the millennium, I was convinced the best thing on
the air was The Simpsons, and I may
have been right. To that end, I decided to give my TV set to my parents and
swore off watching anything, especially the then-nascent wave of reality shows
that followed suit behind MTV’s The Real
World and proudly displayed common folk fighting with each other, usually
battling it out for some cold hard cash.
But then
something happened. TV got better, fast. And it got not just more entertaining,
but more thoughtful and complex and compelling. In grad school, people were
whispering about this show LOST and
how incredible it was, and before that a guy at the local bar couldn’t stop
talking about Arrested Development. I
tried to hold out, vowing not to watch (upholding, therefore, a thinly veiled
elitist attitude), but I couldn’t. These very smart people were talking about
these shows and taking them very seriously, even the funny ones. Then The Office came along, and Project Runway, and I gave in. Big time.
Problem was,
I still didn’t have a TV. So when I started binging, trying feverishly to catch
up on all that I had missed, I turned, naturally, to the internet.
And what a stir
that caused! One massive writers’ strike and some eight years later, LOST and The Office30 Rock
stream their way into my apartment each week. But something’s missing and it’s
name is CW. I’m hearing a lot about Gossip
Girl and America’s Next Top Model,
but I can’t tune in—CWTV decided to pull the plug on airing full episodes of
their top shows because the internet was allegedly stealing TV viewers. and
This makes me
wonder two things. First, isn’t a good thing if someone wants to watch your
show and goes so far as to watch it online (the quality of web video is
notoriously questionable, I should mention)? And second: who is to say that
those people watching online aren’t also the same people watching the show on
TV? Granted, I’m not one of them, but I’m guessing many people watch in both
places. That’s what an addict does: s/he gets a fix as often as possible,
however possible, and what’s a fan if not someone addicted to the stories the
networks are telling and selling? And not giving an addict what s/he wants is
rarely a good idea. In fact, it may be downright unsafe.
So, I’m
willing to bet that this power move on CW’s part will prove to be a mistake.
Consumers are busy people; they have crazy lives and want to be able to watch
what they want to watch when they want to watch it, and if the network takes
that freedom away, it’s going to be the network’s loss. Besides, there are
plenty of shows available to choose from, many of which can be viewed entirely
online, so it’s not a hard choice to make. Especially if a show counts on a
viewer watching week after week to make sense of the story, it would seem in a
network’s best interest to make that unbroken narrative available in some
capacity. If they don’t, they’ll get viewers who give up because they
can’t keep up.
ABC fully
understands that their hit show LOST is
intricate and sometimes difficult to follow, even for the connoisseur, and they
have likewise made every single episode of every single season available online
for free. Brilliant, I say. If someone wants to get involved at the urge of
their friends and colleagues, it would seem smartest to allow them access to
the whole story so they can get on board from the beginning. ABC, to boot,
allows LOST to be purchased on
iTunes, which I’ve been known to do because I’m a sucker for the new
flash-forwards they’ve introduced. But, as is inevitable, not every network has
caught on like ABC.
I’m tempted,
for example, to get into Heroes, but
alas, NBC won’t allow it, unless I netflix (which is a verb, now, I’m told,
like “google”) the previous seasons, which I might do, but then I would still
be behind since Heroes doesn’t have
full current episodes online. Nor is The
Office available to purchase on iTunes anymore, for whatever totally
overwhelming bureaucratic reason. Playing hard to get is coy and effective in
dating scenarios, but in TV land, it’s just plain dumb.
“Historically,
the winners are the ones who embrace change,” said Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu.com
in a CNN interview. I couldn’t agree more. And though I realize there are a
million tiny legal issues surrounding the airing of shows online, networks had
better figure them all out as soon as possible if they’re going to make it in
the new market where a television set is no longer necessary for watching television.
Needless to
say, this is a deeply existential moment, therefore, for every major network.
And Godspeed to them, I say!
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