I'm writing this today without access to the internet. I mean, my
phone can access the internet, but only to tell me why my home
broadband is down. Ok, so it's something of a first-world problem
I'll grant you, but bear with me because I have somewhere to go with
this. Also, I should note, I am not particularly angry but I don't
have a blog called, “I'm in a thoughtful mood right now,” so
this'll have to do.
Also, my internet is back. Hmm...to continue or to give up?
Shakespeare would have known what to do, but then again he didn't
have the distractions of the internet to contend with so it's really
no surprise that he got so much stuff done.
My girlfriend recently introduced me to Netflix. I had long avoided
this service for a reason that could best be characterised by an
instinctive mistrust of it. A gut feeling if you will. And it's not a
fear of the New. I have a smartphone now, and while I loath its
presence it has come in handy more than a handful of times. No, it's
not that. Now I would never personally admit to having illegally
downloaded episodes of TV shows from file-sharing sites, but from
what I understand it's more or less possible to watch any episode of
any TV show from pretty much any era within a day of its release.
It's possible to watch American shows that aren't on over here. It's
possible to watch whole series that are no longer on the air. From
what I understand, its benefits far outweigh its drawbacks. Netflix,
on some level, promises to be something in between 'real TV' and
illegal file-sharing. You can watch what they have on their service,
and you can watch it immediately and without commercials. This last
part is absolutely key to why I don't own a television. I hate
commercials. Or adverts, as they ought to be known. For some reason
I've lapsed into speaking, or at least writing, in American. I'm also
splitting my infinitives, but that's a game of 'spot the poor
grammar' that we can save for later.
So what's my problem? Why can't I get on board with Netflix? Well
problem the first is that I do not like the user interface, or UI as
I believe it is known. I don't like how items are bunched together in
groups that I have to navigate through. I don't like scrolling
through endless lists of things when I have no idea what is even on
the list. If I don't know what I'm looking for, I'm almost certainly
not going to find it like that. If you search for something that you
know you want, then there arises the problem that I have with looking
through someone's iPod at a party. They've plugged it into the
speakers because they think their taste in music is superior, but
they don't have anything I like and when I do find an artist that I
like they only have one track because it's from some bullshit
compilation, or worse, a mix album. Netflix is like that guy (almost
always a guy). Also, I haven't been to a party in a long time.
Now, I believe that something like Netflix is almost certainly the
Future of Television. People are already used to on-demand services
and fewer and fewer of us are watching TV as it is aired. We like to
save up a whole season and 'binge-watch' it. We've even been warned
about how, much as with the other types of binge (drink, drugs, etc),
this could be bad for us. But the trend shows no sign of abating. But
the problem is that Netflix does not have most of my shows. And nor
will it any time soon. And there arises a further problem once we
unpack why this might be. We come back to commercials. Ad money pays
for TV shows. Apart from the BBC which is publicly funded, at least
for the time being, and networks in America such as HBO and Showtime
which are funded by subscription. HBO won't let Netflix have their
shows because they already have an on-demand service (that we can't
watch in the UK) that is part of their subscription package. Lose
that, lose their subscribers; lose them, no more HBO. And no more HBO
would mean no more GoT. So no, let's not go there.
And what of commercials? Netflix does not interrupt its shows with
five minutes of mind-numbing ads every ten minutes (have you seen TV
in America? It's fucking insane!) so there is no ad revenue to be
gained from it. Netflix makes its own shows now, too, but not enough
for it to really qualify as a network and since people binge-watch
its shows, any exposure of advertised product would be utterly
impossible to quantify. You have a 24-episode season of a popular
show on a mainstream network and you get, in an hour of TV, fifteen
minutes of ad time. That's the same hour, every week. You can target
your ads to key demographics because people know who watches what. Ad
agencies have that information so they can buy the right slots for
the right advertisers and everyone is happy. People who watch daytime
TV get to find out about new brands of adult nappies or how to turn
their gold into cash; children get to find out about new accessories
for their toys, and everyone (by which I mean no-one) is happy.
So, how does this fit into Netflix and the Future of Television? I
don't know. It's a fucking doozie. TV networks are beholden to their
advertisers, so they need to keep people watching at the correct
times on the correct days of the week. As it stands, this is the only
way for advertisers to flog their wares to the target demographics.
It wouldn't work on Netflix because there are no ads on Netflix. As
soon as they start putting ads in Netflix, people will stop watching
or subscribe to ever increasing levels of 'Premium' in order to avoid
them. So Netflix is not the answer, because it's ultimately more like
a subscription service, a la HBO,
than it is anything else. And what of illegal downloading? Will
Netflix make this a thing of the past? Unlikely. I'm sure it's swayed
a few people away, lured them with House of Cards and other such
fancies, but it lacks the extensive back-catalogue and the
go-anywhere reach of the file-sharing sites. And file-sharing doesn't
impact on advertisers because their shows go out, laden with ads,
every week as normal. Consequently, file-sharing doesn't really
impact on TV networks either. They can still churn out their
derivative crap week after week, year after year because people who
wear adult nappies don't know what a Pirate Bay is and wouldn't know
what to do with it if they did. They're too worried about whether
they just shat themselves or not. HBO's not worried, because they can
probably see the big picture. If you follow illegal downloading to
its natural conclusion, then everybody downloads illegally which
means no one watches HBO. No one subscribes, they have no money; they
have no money, there's not GoT. So illegal downloading isn't the
answer either because it results in a paradox that will destroy us
all and everything we love.
So what is the future of television?
Notice how I removed the caps? I don't know. So the best advice I can
give is from a piece of grafiti that I saw once:
Stop watching, start living.
