brad garland

How will TV change in the next 5 years? 10 years?

We’ve seen a massive shift in the past decade with the invent of companies like Tivo and Netflix. Still more new innovations like Hulu.com, CurrentTV and the possibilities through console gaming like Xbox live. I was reading some articles this week about how time shifting (people watching a show on THEIR time instead of network time) is becoming more and more prevalent. I’ve blogged on this before but I wanted to be more detailed this time.

Can we expect future shows that today come on during ‘primetime’ being shifted to the 4am slots since everyone is just going to record them? And more experimental/pilots being shown during the more peak grazing hours? Or maybe all the ‘live shows’ get shifted to primetime hours instead?

If I had to guess, I’d say “real TV” will become an area for pilots and the shows that succeed will get transported into their own networks. But the networks I’m talking about will be a mashup of an online community and the show themselves. Note: This isn’t a new idea. Some people are trying to do this already.

I’m talking about the entire life of the show being viewed, discussed, distributed from solely an online channel. I could envision a show like ‘The Office’ having a network that a community could interact, I’m talking REALLY interact, with the cast and crew about the show and could be a place where you would get more ‘behind the scenes’ shots or bonus scenes from as well. Maybe even join in with show writers to build in inside jokes that were created solely off of the high interaction of the writers with their community. These community sites (which are hosted by the TV networks) could also pre-release a new episode, for a fee, to people that want to see the show a day early. This could also allow advertisers to advertise on these community sites instead of being fast forwarded as they are today.

What are your thoughts? How do you think TV will change in the next 10 years?

I’ll leave with this example. I rarely watch Saturday Night Live but I do see it on Hulu afterwards (the way I want to see it). Here’s an example of a ‘web only’ piece with Justin Timberlake that would be great PRE-SHOW (and also post-show) that SNL could provide to it’s community and it’s funny, too. Have a good Thanksgiving everybody!