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NEW MEDIA -- Don’t touch that dial: Find it online |
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Written by asap
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Friday, 19 May 2006 |
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With much fanfare, the big TV networks unveiled their fall lineups this week -- a new drama by “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin on NBC, a comedy featuring Mick Jagger as himself on ABC, and so on.
The ritual’s familiar. But these days, eyeballs are migrating online and viewers are TiVo-ing past the commercials that pay for the shows. Either that or downloading entire seasons of “Lost” to watch when and where they want. If all else fails, you can usually buy the DVD.
So the question becomes: Who cares about the network schedule? And is the TV “season” becoming obsolete?
asap asked John Tomlin -- creator of the Internet TV site Vidocity.com and a former TV producer himself (“Inside Edition,” “A Current Affair”).
asap: The networks are unveiling their fall programming. Why do they still do this when the whole nature of TV watching is changing?
Tomlin: It’s still an economic thing for them. They want to sell as much as they can up front. So that’s what that’s all about, trying to figure out: How much money can we make this year. Can we pay for all these programs? ... It is to a certain extent an anachronism, but it’ll be around for a while.
asap: If it’s an anachronism and they can see the business model is changing, why is it still sticking?
Tomlin: Because it still makes them money and that’s really what it’s all about -- it’s a business, and they have to sell ads. Until the advertisers really take a big chunk of the money that goes to the networks and put it in alternative programming, you’re not going to see much of a change.
(The statistics bear Tomlin out. Broadcast TV ad revenue was $46.5 billion in 2005 compared to $11.9 billion for online ad spending, according to Jupiter Research. That was even though people are spending more time online -- for example, the coveted 25-to-34 year old demographic spends 14 hours a week online compared to 10 hours in front of the tube, says Jupiter.)
asap: When will we start to see Internet-native original programming like what’s shown on TV?
Tomlin: You’ll see some stuff happening but until there is real convergence ... (and) it looks as good on your TV in your living room as regular television, until that happens you’ll see some playing around, some experiments, but I don’t think it’s going to make a big difference.
asap: So why are you doing it now -- creating new programming on Vidocity.com?
Tomlin: What I’m doing is a bit different. I’m doing short television shows that you can watch at your desk at lunch if you want to find out interesting and fun things to do in New York, and eventually we’re going to roll it to other cities. You don’t have to sit back and watch it as you do a sitcom.
Stephanie Hoo is asap’s business writer. She’s still watching three-year-old “West Wing” episodes on DVD.
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