TV is going down… or is it just moving in another direction?

“ Twenty years ago, three commercials would reach 80 per cent of the American audience, today it would take 150 commercials to reach the same audience.”
(Tom Himpe: Advertising is Dead, Long Live advertising, 2006).

New technology gives possibilities for new media. Internet and cable TV has enabled users to switch off and tune out whenever they want. And not only can they watch whatever they want to, whenever they want to; people also become co-producers of the media content.
It’s especially the Einstein Generation – young people in the age of 13 to 20 – who are frequent users of new media. They adopt almost every new form of media in their lives as if it is natural. They talk daily with friends on MSN, have a digital life on social networks as Hyves and Facebook, they keep each other posted by Twitter, exchange experiences on forums and watch movies on You Tube whenever they want.
And who can blame them? Why would you sit in front of your TV, waiting for your favourite program (which will be interrupted several times by advertisers), while you also have to choice to watch that same program when and wherever you want. This makes the Internet much more attractive than TV. No wonder that TV makers are trying to find a way to integrate TV and Internet. But how can they accomplish collaboration between TV and Social Media?
That is the question we will try to answer in this course.

On the website Ted.com is an interesting talk from Peter Hirshberg on why Internet is so much better than TV:


If you would like to read more on this subject there is also an interesting article on Media Post about the declines of TV revenues.