21 Aug 08 Broadcasting vs Streaming
So the Olympics was watched on TV by around 92% of viewers, and if you look at the total minutes watched agaisnt minutes streamed online it’s over 99% (source TV Week)
I suspect that these are probably similar for most types of video material.
I know that I’m very atypical when it comes to TV. I almost exclusively obtain my news and worldly information from the Internet, with a much smaller amount from broadcast radio (mostly BBC World Service). Then again, I watch very little TV. Period.
Of course, producing TV programming isn’t cheap. Someone somewhere has to pay for it, and mostly its supported by advertising. What I do find strange is that although many people will complain about advertisements on web sites, or blogs, such as this one, they’ll quite happily watch an hour-long show, that is interrupted without warning every 7-8 minutes by intrusive annoying commercials that can’t be skipped, and most often bear no relation to the content of the programming! For me, aside from having a great difficulty of finding content that I find interesting and engaging, viewing is spoiled for me by those ads.
I can watch shows from a service like Joost or Hulu, and while there are commericials they’re much less obtrusive, more contextual, and much less frequent than network TV.
Of course, another great advantage of online services such as those I mentioned above is the ‘on-demand’ model. I’ve already said I watch little TV, but if I did, I want it to be my slave and not my master. I don’t need to mess around with VCR, DVR, Tivo or anything else with Joost for example. I can watch what I want, when I want.
Tags: advertisements, annoying commercials, bbc, bbc world, bbc world service, broadcast radio, demand model, dvr, hulu, Joost, little tv, network tv, olympics, tivo, tv programming, tv week, vcr, video material
19 Jun 08 Internet Bypasses TV In The UK
According to ZDNet, Internet advertising in the UK will overtake TV this year. I am not suprised really, it was almost bound to happen at some point.
Take myself. I watch very little television, mostly because I am not interested in much of the content; secondly because on network television there are so many commercial breaks it spoils the few things I am interested in watching. I really don’t want to see an ad for injury lawyers, or for a new drug every 6-7 minutes.
Now, I appreciate that everything costs money, and advertising pays for those costs; after all, I have a number of blogs on which I carry advertising, including this one, as it pays for the costs of running them. However, no-one has to click on any ads on my sites, unless they want to, and that’s the same on most other sites I visit.
I keep in touch with what’s going on in the world. I read the local newspaper. I read the New York Times. I get a daily podcast of the Wall Street Journal. I frequently visit the BBC news site – as I feel they are less biased, and more trustworthy in their news reporting than Fox, or CNN for example.
Sometimes, I find the advertisements on web sites are useful. Sometimes I click on them, and read about the product and service that is interesting me. Sometimes I go on to make a purchase. One reason is that the advertisements online are more likely to relate to what you’re reading, unlike on television, where a commercial for a backache pill comes in the middle of a history documentary.
Tags: advertisements, bbc, bbc news, blogs, cnn, commercial breaks, costs money, fox, history documentary, injury lawyers, internet advertising, network television, new york times, news site, one reason, podcast, spoils, wall street, wall street journal, zdnet
21 May 08 Changes At The Eye
Of course, dear reader, you noticed right away. Yes, we’ve got a new look.
It was felt here at The Eye, that perhaps it was getting a little too crowded, that there was perhaps a little too much information on the page.
Did you really need to know what the time was here? If you know where I’m situated, and you’re in the same time zone you know what time it is. If you’re in a different time zone, you probably don’t care.
Of course, we have keep some advertisements which we hope you don’t find overbearing, and indeed hopefully useful on occasions, and we do need to keep the lights on here too, and this blogging lark does cost time and money, even though we enjoy it and it’s fun.
To get to this new look, we spend some of that precious time (it’s like gold around here), looking at various new ideas and themes.
Some looked very nice, and classy, and we actually did do some code rewriting on a couple of them to customize them to what we wanted – and then changed our minds.
There was one them that was really cool, but it wouldn’t allow me to use my flickr images in the way that the designer had got the whole thing set up, and I didn’t want to go re-loading them all again onto my own server. It’s not that I’ve not got the space; it’s that The Eye has been around a few years, and I haven’t got the time to make a few thousand previous postings look pretty.
One day, when I start a whole new blog though, I’ll take a look at some of these more unusual designs again.
Anyway, we hope you like the new look!
Please do comment or drop us an email and tell us your thoughts, good or bad. We’d love to hear from you.
Tags: advertisements, blog, different time zone, gold, images, lark, occasions, postings, precious time, time and money
