Who Needs A TV Schedule?
from the so-last-millennium dept
This won't be news to anyone with a digital video recorder like a TiVo, but people are beginning to wake up to the idea that TV schedules won't mean much in the future. With the combination of a TiVo-style home server system, and the ability to download any television program you might ever want to see, the future of television is much more about watching what you want, when you want, than many people expected. While the idea of "video on demand" has been around for years - many TV execs expected it to all be centrally run, and the rise of TiVo-like systems took them by surprise. It may not be that long until the only thing that really requires a "TV schedule" will be live events where some people just can't handle not seeing them live - such as sporting events or awards shows. However, even then, many people will be perfectly happy catching up later. News events are a bit trickier to predict, but the nightly news roundup makes less and less sense when everyone is getting their news in real-time via the internet already.
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