The Death of the One Eyed Magic Box

By Chris Hubbard

I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that TV is boring. Wait, no that’s not quite right, allow me to correct myself. I’ve been watching a lot of Internet lately because TV is boring. I know right? Like saying “I was watching internet,” will catch on. But that’s the reality of the situation. I know it may be sad to think that attention spans are so short that even TV has become a grueling experience, but it has. In the course of about ten years the generation with the shortest attention span has actually revolutionized the definition of “short attention span.” In the past that meant you watch a lot of TV. Now it means that you spend a lot of time online. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks doing both at once and I have to say the experience was eye opening. Television has become an obsolete medium, and it’s possible that we see an end to it in the foreseeable future.

I mean, how could television compete with internet when I’ve been watching entire seasons of shows like How I Met Your Mother, The Office, The Venture Brothers, Spaced, and The IT Crowd in order and whenever I want to. That’s right, this amazing thing called the internet is apparently not only a great place to lose yourself in random nonsense, pay for things you don’t feel like going to the store and paying for, having your identity stolen, and talking to complete strangers you otherwise would have no reason to interact with, it’s also great for watching TV on. Better than the television could ever be.

Television used to be so cool; the thing to do on a Friday night when all your friends were being lame and your girlfriend, who was totally Canadian and that’s why no one ever saw her, was too busy playing hockey or insert Canadianism here to talk on the phone. Remember when it was all about waiting all week for that Thursday line up?

Well, that’s the best part about watching TV on the internet: EVERY night is Thursday night! There is no wait, no channel surfing, and best of all, no cost (other than the price of standard internet connection.) I literally finished BBC sitcom The IT Crowd, a show of some twenty-four episodes, in twelve hours. Sure, that’s not a recommended dosage, but if I were to wait for my old friend Television to watch those episodes, I still wouldn’t even know about the hilarious antics of Roy, Moss, and Jen, who have yet to air on any major American network. On a weekly, major network TV show, like How I Met Your Mother, it would have taken me six years to catch up (that’s not an approximation, I did the math… shut up.) Sure, I could have made it a point to watch reruns, whenever the hell they come on, but they’re never played in order. Buying a box set might be an option, for someone who has forty to sixty dollars to spend on a single season of a show they’ll probably watch once or twice. The last one of those I bought though was season one of Highlander (shut up, I like it!) and to my surprise, not only had I seen most of the episodes already, but I found them all posted on Hulu a few months later, along with the seasons 2-6 episodes. Internet saved me about $300. Which is of course the point. You can go online and watch everything in order, for one hundred percent less than the cost of a box set of DVDs, and without the hassle of having to be in the same room as a televison AND a DVD player.

Yesterday, I was stranded without a computer, and all of this came crashing down on me like a skyscraper full of fat people watching TV on their computers; watching TV has actually become boring. How pathetic is that? Whereas for as long as I can remember I’ve had any show I wanted to watch just a click (and maybe a quick commercial) away, I was actually stuck watching this giant box in the living room and getting no enjoyment out of it. There was nothing on, it was simple as that. The same old news on ESPN as always, the same soaps that make you wonder both “are they even trying?” and “how is there actually a demographic for this?” The NCIS/CSI/Law and Order (SVU or classic) orgy that’s on pretty much any channel that starts with “T.” For the first time in a long time I was trapped watching scheduled programming. Just typing it leaves a bad taste in my mouth somehow. If you start watching the television at 1 pm on a weekday, you have to wait about five hours before anything good/new comes on. If I had had old Oscar Awesomepants Quasimodo Spaceman Jr. (my laptop’s name,) I could have spent that five hours watching… well, anything I wanted to.

I mean, sure, TV is still vital for those people who like to watch new episodes of –oh wait, nope, if you wait an hour you will discover that it’s found it’s way online as well. Why pay for HBO? Because “it’s not TV, it’s HBO,” isn’t a very good argument anymore. Especially when you can find The Sopranos, Dexter, Game of Thrones, True Blood, or any other piece of premium paid television in a few short minutes on the Goggle search bar. I mean, I watched all of them online for free, why shouldn’t everyone?

What about live shows though, like the news? I mean, they can’t get posted online, and if they could who would want to watch yesterday’s news? It’s called live streaming, people, and not only is it more than possible, it’s more than common. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched ESPN on the laptop. Now virtually any bar is a sports bar. Maybe having a laptop out in a bar isn’t the best idea, but hey, that’s your prerogative.

The point is, the times are changing, and television doesn’t seem to be changing with them. In the beginning of the twentieth century, motion pictures were the dominant force. Almost every person in America went the theater at least once a week. With the invention of television, the movie industry had to adapt to the changing market. Now people could watch shows whenever they wanted, in the comfort of their own home, by simply turning a dial. This is where 3D films came from, and this is also what inspired Widescreen and HD sound. Even in spite of these things the golden age of film is long since past, and now, in 2011, the golden age of television is also behind us. The internet not only offers the same programming that TV does and offer exclusive content as well, it is beginning to eclipse the Idiot Box once and for all. You can get away with paying for internet only and no TV, and you wouldn’t miss a single thing. If anything, you would miss less because there are no scheduling conflicts when you can click a link whenever you want. Now it’s TV’s turn to change or fade away, and there’s almost nothing it can do. I mean, honestly, who’s running out of buy a 3D Television? It’s a nice gimmick, but I hardly want to watch Matt Lauer doing The Today Show outside of the 2D cage where he belongs. If that’s not the answer, then what is? Short of actually becoming the internet (which would actually make both TV and the internet better, lets face it), I don’t see a solution, and unless there is one somewhere on the horizon, I can see the death of television as we know it coming within my lifetime.