The New Television?

[gfish]

Over Christmas, my parents mentioned that they wanted to start watching The Sopranos, but had just missed the end of the current season. I suggested they rent them on DVD. Fast-forward to their visit earlier this month. They had taken the suggestion and now wouldn't shut up about the series. They had been watching 4 episodes a night and were completely obsessed.

I find the amount of television my parents watch a bit excessive, particularly given how little they used to, but there isn't anything wrong with this by itself. God knows I've obsessed over shows in the past, and nothing makes it easier than having copies. Being able to watch several in a row, or watch your favorites over again, greatly intensifies the obsessing process. Yet...

We're not talking about semi-demented fanboys, we're talking about my parents. And the show being obsessed over isn't The Prisoner, or Buffy, or Daria, but The Sopranos. A very popular show, but not your standard fannish target of obsession.

The technology is changing, but the uses seem to be changing even faster. DVD releases of TV shows are getting more frequent and more popular. Part of this is the compactness and perceived archival quality of DVD. Part of this is the fact that they're finally putting multiple episodes on each disk -- only an extreme fan would want to pay $20+ for each episode. Digital video recorders like the TiVo spell a death sentence for advertisement driven television -- if they catch on. They're still quite rare, and we could still see some draconian legislation passed to stop them. Despite the threat being unproven, the new emphasis on commoditized TV shows sure looks like a defensive move. If giving video away for free and making money from the ads is a dead business model in a digital world (and the dotcoms certainly proved that point, I think), then they'll just have to sell the video directly to the consumers.

It's poetic, really. Television forced radical changes on just about every aspect of film. Now television seems to be naturally moving back toward the old studio system itself.