First by the flurry of bit-torrenting, now by iTunes. This innovation in on-demand visual media has ramifications for politicians and how they get their message out to the electorate.

I missed Battlestar Galactica [BSG] last night due to inter-state travel and other circumstances. I bought it, and watched it today through iTunes for $1.99 USD. The download took about five minutes, and it was very watchable on the computer monitor.

The mini-series and series one of Battlestar Galactica was funded by Sky TV in the UK. It wasoriginally shown to British television audiences only. As a consequence, technology proficient Sci-fi fans recorded them and distributed them through through bit-torrents. Sci-fi fans around the world bit-torrented BSG and watched the show independent of television. I was one of them.

The global verdict was largely a thumbs-up for this re-visioning of Battlestar Galactica and the SciFi channel in the US rushed to fund a second series of BSG.

Apple recently expanded their iTunes store to include Videos. Even a well rendered and compressed stream from an hour long is considerable. The BSG episode I downloaded is 200 Mb in total. That is a lot of infrastructure and bandwidth to support that in mass market terms. But they have done it. Far quicker that I thought they be able to.

One dollar ninety-nine later, I am left wondering why I pay seventy dollars a month for satellite television. If I can get series like HBO's Rome or SciFi's BSG on demand I don't see a need to pay a large monthly amount for a television subscription.

This change will have political ramifications. Already the mass media outlets have seen the circulation of newspapers drop precipitously as the internet provides a more convenient and omnipresent distribution form. The nightly news programs have seen their audiences grey to the point that all the advertising on them is for pills, health insurance or intimacy performance enhancers.

Bill Hayden wrote in his autobiography;

We had a market to reach - the electorate - and our medium was then as it is today, the media. What the media was prepared to carry determined, and still does, the manner of our presentation.

Television probably won't disappear entirely, but with on-demand shows, and white goods mingling with computer functionality, the old notion of Channel 2, 7, 9 and 10 holding public opinion to ransom will be long gone. It may be some other form of combative segmented media instead; ie Blair, an Australian dailykos or some other permutation of that form of echo-chamber grapeshot commentary. Or something else superior to that wasted media form.

This poses an issue for politicians. Previously the government could grant favours to the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer in return for their support. But if visual media becomes on demand, then who will pay for 30 second grabs? Not me.

Will I pay for an entire speech? Probably not.

Will I pay for newscasts? If parties, politicians, parliaments and citizen commenteriat are providing RSS feeds, podcasts and quicktime movies, then the answer here is no.

I don't see an absolute need for television in my future. The entrenched interests in Australia will try to make sure the massive comsumption of bandwidth that analogue free-to-air television uses will remain. Even with Packer dead, that will take a long time politically and economically to kill. The market will have to move far beyond it (like 50 years) before a politician will be willing to risk the political fallout from removing that bandwidth from the TV stations.

A politician could go the route of Andrew Bartlett and publish directly to their electorate, and anyone else who wants a read. Or they could try and get more popular blogs and websites to carry their type-copies. Maybe even innovate some other way to interact with their constituents and the Australian people.

cam

Television via Autowitch's flickr

In Virginia I had a big widescreen LCD television which was hooked up to satellite. We had HBO, Showtime, the Ice Hockey package, etc, etc, etc. In Phoenix I do not have a TV nor a cable/satellite connection. I have not missed it. I am but one data point, however, I seriously doubt I will ever get a TV again. I am lost to that form of media.

Arthur's article does not mention demographics either. Apparently the group that is deserting television is the wealth 25-35 group which has plenty of disposable income to spend on the latest fashions.

Apparently the average American home has more televisions than people now. Nielson reports:

New findings from Nielsen's Television Audience Report show that in 2009 the average American home had 2.86 TV sets, which is roughly 18% higher than in 2000 (2.43 sets per home), and 43% higher than in 1990 (2.0 sets). In addition, there continue to be more TVs per home than people - in 2009 the average U.S. home had only 2.5 people vs 2.86 television sets.

Apparently only 2% of households have no television. I fall in that category. As Prashant Gopal notes:

It turns out that the computer is quite an efficient television.

I download the occasional movie and TV series (such as Rome) from iTunes and we watch them on the laptop which is thrown to the end of the bed. We are not big consumers of that type of media but the laptop is sufficient to meet our needs.