A while back I read some study about how the major television networks were trying to stem the decline of television viewers. They are loosing viewership due to the increased use of the Internet as a provider of entertainment. They are loosing people to the general availability of on-demand entertainment. Well count one more lose. My son Taylor has become one of those loses. He loves the ready availability of entertainment/education on Internet. His favorite sites? www.pbskids.org, www.transformers.com, and www.starwars.com. He can then link through those sites to others, were he can watch streaming video of his favorite shows. (One of the local channels had the Transformers (and others) cartoon on in the afternoon, but choose to cancel it to show reruns of ER. Idiots.)

The cartoon comes in three separate parts. And he puts up with advertising on the site and in the streams. He is the future of a new kind of television viewer. Right now, Tivo and its competition are fine for this. By the real future of TV (and I think that some cable providers and maybe some others are doing something like this) is a complete on demand schedule where the viewer can choose there own schedule of shows delivered to them from the provider with no need for a set-top box or media center style PC. I watch I want to watch, when I want to watch. No channel flipping, no searching for something to watch in the middle of the night. [The Comcast comes very close to this…the first problem that I see, is that shows are available during a certain period of time..from day x to day y. True on demand when be available all the time.]

There are a couple of shows that Adrienne and I like to watch that air at the same time. We haven’t moved to Tivo yet, so we have to record one while we watch the other. Sometimes there is a special or something else going on that also conflicts with these shows and we are stuck trying to decide which shows are more “important” to us. (Sometimes if we forget to record a show or miss it completely, I will try to grab a torrent of the show…which is very useful.)

Should I have to do that? No. I should be able to design my own broadcast schedule from the multitude of networks, to watch when I want to watch. And I would even sit through commercials if I could get that. True on-demand TV.

And of course, why am I stuck watching on a TV…any device, any where. Once again, torrents are great.

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