Writing in this month’s Television Magazine, Nigel Walley writes: If you live in a reasonably advanced TV household, the number of ways to get hold of a TV show have multiplied in the last couple of years. If you want to watch tonight’s Hollyoaks and can’t get back in time, you can record it on your PVR, get it via ‘Catch-Up’ on the TV or stream it from the PC. At some point in the near future, you will be able to download it directly to your iPod or your PSP. In last month’s Television Roger Graef made the leap to suggest that, because of these technologies we won’t need broadcasters and ‘as more content becomes available online, schedules will go to pot’.
Now I spend my life examining these technologies for clients. I have had access to both a PVR and on-demand programmes on my home telly for at least five years, and am a big consumer of online video.So as I read Roger’s piece, I felt the nagging question ‘if this is the case, why do I still watch so much broadcast TV?’