I love watching television. It’s always been the king of entertainment for me. When I was a kid, it was cartoons like Looney Tunes and the old 60s Batman show. Today, it’s cartoons like Archer and live-action shows like The Flash that I enjoy watching. Some things never change, I guess. However, some things are changing, like our viewing habits and where we are getting our content, making me wonder if television as we once knew it is dead.
I know people are always saying this or that has seen its final days: “Rock and roll is dead. Chivalry is dead…” But just look at how our kids access their entertainment today and you’ll see that everything is changing. My own children hardly ever turn on the television to watch shows from cable. Usually, the two of them are sitting like zombies with their faces lit up from the glow of an iPad. Both my kids like to watch videos on YouTube of people playing video games, so they spend their allotted daily screen time goggle-eyed while other people build things in Minecraft. I don’t really get it. It’s like watching someone else eat a meal or scratch their nose when it’s you that has the itch.
Of course, I can’t really complain about my kids’ screen time, as I am an avid video game player and have my own zombified screen time to defend. However, this past Christmas our family received Apple TV as a gift, and our television habits have changed dramatically. Apple TV, for those who don’t know, is a digital media player from Apple that can receive and stream data to a television.
What does that mean? It means you can make anything you see on your iPad or iPhone appear on your TV in full HD glory. It’s really quite amazing. From photos to videos, apps and beyond, you can now have it all on your big screen. And Apple TV also gives you access to apps that you can install right onto the device. So you can have a ton of streaming services to enjoy. No longer do you have to wait for something to come on television. You can search it out on YouTube, Netflix, Hulu or others. Heck, most of the major networks stream their content to their websites nowadays anyway, so you can practically watch anything you like, whenever you want, from a web browser (which you can do on Apple TV).
So unlike when I watched Looney Tunes and Batman as I kid and had to wait for certain days and times to enjoy my shows, today I can watch The Flash or Archer any time of the day or night. I barely turn on our cable box at all these days since getting Apple TV. And a subscription to Netflix is much cheaper than any cable subscription package you’ll find out there… and I can almost guarantee you’ll never say “there’s nothing on” like you used to in the past.
So why do I still have my old cable box? To be honest, I don’t know. I keep saying it is because I like the “chance discovery” of things while surfing channels, however, as I spend more and more time having control over when and where I access my content, I’m finding it less desirable to have programming simply thrown at me at someone else’s will. But cable is also changing, and the CRTC, the TV regulatory body in Canada, has mandated that cable companies offer more intelligent packaging of channels to better serve customers. I think it is too little, too late. Because it isn’t only Apple TV that is offering a streaming box, but others like the Steam Box for PCs take the content control out of cable companies’ hands and give it right to consumers.
I know I’ve been fighting it for a long time, but after only a few scant months with Apple TV, I’m ready to cancel my cable subscription for good. The other night, I watched some Looney Tunes cartoons and an episode of the old ’60s Batman series, before browsing over to CTV’s website to catch the latest The Flash. So I guess technically you can say that TV is still alive and well – and so are its addicted and zombified viewers – and it is the networks and cable services that are on their way out.
The king is dead, but long live the new king.
