When Internet Media Shuffles Its Feet

I haven't written anything in a week. My Auntie Norma passed away last week and this weekend was spent in San Antonio for the funeral. It was a weekend without internet and oddly enough without well formed writing ideas. So, I'm going to try to get back in the swing of things by writing something right here and now.

The only thing that could come to mind was television.

As a child of media, it's understandable that I would think on this. While I didn't have the internet over the weekend, I did have MSNBC and CNN. The two tied me over fair enough so I'm not uninformed about things that happened. But I did miss a few of my usual shows while I was reuniting with family. Today was spent recuperating and playing catchup with webcomics, blogs, and television over the Internet.

Once again I was struck in the face with how proprietary ABC is with its web presence (click at your own risk of sudden loud noises and your processor working harder than it should). I remember a time a few years ago when I would catch everything on ABC's site. I'd watch shows again just because things were so easy there. But today, I tried catch Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty, both of which I missed, and was totally annoyed at how ABC had my chugging along, waiting for loads, frozen screens, etc. etc. etc.

If there's anything Hulu has taught broadcasters is that people will watch things legally if it's simple enough. We don't even mind watching commercials as long as the system works well. This kind of thinking has even brought about impersonators (I'll get back to this example in a second).

Not everyone wants to download each show we want to watch. With the advancement of broadband is the advancement of Internet streaming. This is a constantly changing face of the 21st Century and television is slowly following suit. Why is Disney so slow to realize this?

A paragraph ago, I linked to Fancast. ABC is a part of it and features its shows "there." I say this in quotations because ABC uses Fancast and Veoh as aggregators as opposed to actual hosts for their content. So if I feel like watching Samantha Who tomorrow afternoon (which I'll end up doing since in the battle between Heroes and Samantha Who, Heroes clearly wins), I may click on a link in Fancast or Veoh and get a new pop-up window to the exact same ABC streamer I would find on ABC's site. Thus there is no way for me to avoid their now clunky system unless I find their content on some other bootleg site (which I ended up doing today).

What Disney and other companies have to realize is that in a new age, there are other people at the table and a new way to face broadcasting. Now is not the time to put an insufficient system out on the market and hoard your content when others are revolutionizing web media much better than you can. Otherwise, you will most certainly have people pirating content and not caring much about their crimes.

Oh, I'm talking to you, too, FOX. This whole eight day gap for me to watch House isn't helping a business model, it's punishing me for missing you last Tuesday. If you wanted people to catch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you'd show it on a night that isn't as saturated as Thursday. So stop making me wait a week to catch what I should be seeing the following day. You'll pay for it in your business model soon, I swear.

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