An article starting with the following lines naturally needs to have further scrutiny:
About twenty years ago people noticed computers and TV were on a collision course and started to speculate about what they'd produce when they converged. We now know the answer: computers. It's clear now that even by using the word "convergence" we were giving TV too much credit.
The article goes on to explain in very minute detail why the computers won and TV is a dying medium with absolutely zip zero future. Listing four main reason why it did/does die.
1.) open platform and the speed benefit to get things out there vs. a controlled environment with a hierarchical structure.
2.) Moores Law - Speed of the internet goes exponentially - that allowed for content to be streamed
3.) Piracy… yes piracy is good for spreading stuff and it made it clear that the future of media is free as in beer. There is no business model and there will never be one that competes with free - that does apply to news, books and music. Advertisments are not a business model and I might explain at one point why I think that is.
4.) social application. People are social creatures (not the artificial ones like me but the real humans seem so) and spending time to watch a series of tubes is just not a very social endeavor. Even sitting with friends in the same room watching the tubes is not very social - so people opt for the easy social things - Massive Multiplayer Online games social media sites etc. And that also makes you a broadcaster instead of a consumer and that is a very empowering feeling - one that tv will never ever be capable off for those on the outside of the glass tube.
These are the reasons stated in the article and they are very compelling reasons in its own but on top there are some that made tv irrelavant even faster here are my additional reasons:
5.) Greed. Trying to get the most advertisement dollars possible quite good programs where chopped up in first 30 then 15 then 10 then even 5 minutes parts and filled with horrific bright loud interludes of first 1 then 3 then 5 minute commercial breaks. Watching TV nowadays is like watching a commercial channel with some programming in between.
6.) More Greed. Trying to get the most advertisement dollars you had to get the most viewers and to do that you had to find the lowest common denominator. Which in the mind of programming executives in the "I am important" suits was game shows, reality tv and crappy talk shows, intermingled with some violence and of course meaningless sports. That made TV as a source of information and mind building almost completely irrelevant. Meaning that people started feeling that they lost time even faster.
7.) Failing to see niches and where it saw niches trying to maximize profit at all costs. Thats something the internet can do so much better - filling niches even if there are only 5 people interested. TV operation had become to expensive that filling a niche was just not profitable - something things on the internet do need to worry about too much. But even profitable bigger niches where tried to make into mainstream - which for most niches will never work - alianating the niches participants.
The TV networks already seem, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. But they're still dragging their heels. They still seem to wish people would watch shows on TV instead, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to wish people would wait till the next morning and read them printed on paper. They should both just face the fact that the Internet is the primary medium.
Yes and the boon for humanity will be greater understanding of human on the other side of the planet. Greater information share and a lot less wasted time on things that where pushed upon humanity and made it more stupid in the process.
The thing is the underlying forces are so great, TV has such a huge place in society with about everything "big" connected to it that loosing this medium will also mean social upheaval big time as there is nothing out there anymore controlling the masses and keeping them happy with football or that sunday night talk - and normal people might start engaging with each other - even internationally - can you imagine what would happen? Mutual understanding and knowledge sharing - the horror!
Read the whole article over at paulgraham.com
