In Search of Everything All at Once

When I was a kid, I remember watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and listening in disbelief as Data told a 20th century person brought back from a cryogenic freeze that television didn't persist more than 10 to 20 years into the 21st century.

I was watching TV when I saw this of course, so I immediately dismissed this. Being born in 1980, I have known TV all of my life. Life without some sort of television viewing seemed strange to me, and since inventions like radio, which had been around nearly a hundred years was still strong at the time, I didn't think that prediction made sense.

It turns out though, Data was right.

Fast forward to about 5 years ago. A good friend of mine, Ted Newkirk of AccessVegas.com, started gearing his site up for streaming video. I wrote his video CMS, which isn't terribly different from YouTube now, not really knowing if it would take off or not. It didn't, but not because it wasn't a good idea, it was just a bit too early.

Then YouTube and other sites like it changed the face of video, forever. It didn't help television's case that TiVo and similar DVR's (digital video recorders) were slowly eliminating TV's biggest moneymaker - commercial ads. This perfect storm of innovation, cheaper broadband access, and a growing distaste for TV commercials (along with the growing ability to skip them) crashed ashore with more vengeance than anyone imagined. We're still weathering the storm.

The current writer's strike is just one more example of changing times. Even big media companies aren't sure how the future of video entertainment will work out.

One thing's for sure - the world is now becoming on demand, thanks to the Internet. It's time television followed suit.

Video on Demand from Comcast and other cable providers is an example of media companies trying to find out where things are going. But is VOD on the television via traditional TV cable the future? I don't think so. Are sites like YouTube the way television entertainment is headed? I don't think so either. I believe the prevailing solution that will eventually replace the concept we know of as the television will be a synergy of the two, accessing video on demand via the Internet in a more friendly and media-center way.

Either way, we know this much for certain. The television entertainment industry will not be the same in 15 years.

Data was pretty smart, huh?