‘Boob tube reborn’
This is not a fashion piece this week, I am not going to tell you that there is something to replace denim. Some things just seem to ‘be’, never changing in our minds. As creatures of habit we are slavishly predictable in many facets of life yet here we are in the midst of a sea change in the use of a staple item.
When I was a child we used to rent a TV from Radio Rentals, that was very common in those days and we thought nothing of it. I remember once that the TV was not working and my dad called up the store to ask them to fix it. He got the ‘runaround’ and saw that we were likely to be stuck with a faulty TV for some time to come. He then executed a ‘checkmate’ maneuver and said this;
“ In 10 minutes , I am putting the TV outside at the end of the path for you to collect it and fix it…I suggest you come and get it” This he did, he was a man of his word.
Amazingly, within 30 minutes the TV had been picked up and we had a replacement sitting in our front room ! In those days that was as high tech as home entertainment got.
Fast forward to today and we see that the battle for our viewing loyalty is raging over the internet. As regular readers of this site will know, we at 3rd Planet have been talking about the death of TV for some time now, to be clear, not the death of the device but the death of how we use it.
The most recent reports confirm our predictions of two years ago that the big boys are moving in to our web browsers to capture our attention.
Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix are duking it out in an attempt to win us over. How they are doing this is really interesting, especially to a company like 3rd Planet. They are not trying to outdo each other with ever more sophisticated technology but rather they are developing their own content. They are all attempting to build original programming across many genres to entice us to utilise all their other cool gaming and web related services.
This video shows the Amazon Fire system in use and demonstrates the concept being pursued by all…..
This shift is inevitable, the demise of the written word in mainstream culture looks likely when one considers the massive take-up of video viewing via the internet.Certainly for simple day to day tasks and general information we are being led down the video path , seemingly willingly rather than spending a bit more time reading about things. Perhaps this is more a comment on the state of education around the world than anything else, but that is another topic for another day.
No doubt that content and the creation of it is the very lifeblood of the majority of web based business. Those without the ability to produce and distribute original content in all formats, let’s not forget the excessively vibrant audio sector here as well, should be in strong positions going forward.
Those without need to make some strategic alliances….. yesterday!
see you on the long and winding road….. Patrick
