the future of television

Internet. Television. Between the two of them, they pretty much have the market covered on your spare time. But with advances in streaming time and the cost of producing a television show each increasing exponentially each year, what can be said about the mixture of the two? What about internet TV?

There are a few different ways of looking at internet television. First, we have the age-old (and by age-old I mean about a year old) practice of watching your favorite shows from NBC, CBS and ABC on the respective websites. It’s handy and takes care of those nasty commercials. Score one for the corporations keeping in control, but that’s not quite what I’m getting at here. The only ways in which that’s really revolutionary is that it means you don’t need a TV to watch TV. Pour the champagne.

Second, then, is YouTube. I love YouTube. I could write sonnets to YouTube. But in and of itself, YouTube isn’t really a form of television. It’s more like a really long episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos, without the commercials, but plus some really creepy stuff. Plus, even here, copyrighted content sneaks in. YouTube has a tendency to host anything except for porn, which leads to a lot of illegal scans of TV shows and movies. And, well, funny as YouTube is, it’s not really known for its scripted content.

Which brings me to number three, scripted internet content. That’s right, there is television on your internet. Sure, it may not be that great, but it’s there. The best example of scripted content which would ordinarily be on a television network is the show Quarterlife. It’s a sort of soap opera about being in your mid-twenties. It’s melodramatic and angst-y, and since the longest episode is about eleven minutes, ridiculously addictive. All you have to do is load up a couple and start watching, and before you realize it, you’re hooked. You can’t help but cheer every time Jed gives Dylan a puppy eyes look. Plus, every episode is right there for you. Right. There.

And that is why the internet actually makes a fair point here. Let’s face it. Television has all the good content: Lost, House MD, Heroes, How I Met Your Mother, etc. What the internet has is archiving. Quarterlife may be a craptastic show, but I can watch every episode in order whenever I want, without waiting for a marathon, and the only other show that lets you do that is Law and Order, but that’s just a fluke of nature.

We may need to give the internet some time to get its act together, but it’s getting there. I mean, what’s not to love? Every episode available, you don’t have to buy a TV, and after all, there’s always YouTube.
-rachel frazier