How to Watch Your Favorite TV Shows Online

While most families still gather around the television each week to watch the latest episode of their favorite show, a quiet revolution is afoot: free, online television. The NYTimes recently reported that 16% of households watched at least one show online in the past year; this number is double from the previous year. New viewers are discovering that watching TV online filters advertising, saves time and restores sanity to a busy household. And for families concerned about the content of a program, parents can now watch the show themselves and then show it to their children. After all their homework is done first, of course!

The major networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) all have the majority of their shows available on-line as do many of the smaller networks (CW, HBO, Comedy Central, Disney and others). You can find out which shows are available through the TV Squad link at the left. To watch a show online, go to the network's website, look for "full episodes" and sit back and relax. A typical offering includes the episode currently airing, stripped of all commercials except for four to six 30-second spots (which leaves your total viewing time under 45 minutes) that can be streamed at your convenience for at least a week from the show's first airing. Frequently, the entire season that has aired is available. The quality is solid on my DSL network: I can watch all my tv shows in a screen large enough to see the action clearly and some of the networks even offer full-screen viewing.

This is a nascent technology, but one that has taken off dramatically since summer of 2006 when ABC started airing Alias on-line. By that fall, every network had at least a handful of shows, including unaired episodes from cancelled shows. Today very few major shows are not available online. Like most technologies, this is a growing innovation; however, the speed at which new people are adopting it suggests that the old dream of uniting the television and the internet is not so farfetched. In the future, look for large screen tvs with internet connections, allowing families to return to gathering around the television, but offering them the freedom to decide whether 8pm or 9:13 is a better time to start a tv show. (We still need faster internet connections to make this possible, but many companies are promising that in the next 3-5 years.)

This new technology has some surprising implications for local television networks and advertisers. Local network affiliates traditionally have been the only way for a network to broadcast a show, but now they can go directly to the customer. This means that many local stations realize they need to highlight local tv news and events (your city's favorite celebrity chef, or the Friday night football game, or the local school board election), which may usher in a new era of community programming. Advertisers also recognize that viewers are willing to watch tv, but want commercials to be brief and interesting. Studies show that sponsoring an online tv show garners more name recognition for the advertised brand. Look for advertisers to plan shorter, more directed and interesting ad spots as this new technology takes off.

Today the convenience of online TV allows a growing number of people to watch their favorite shows when it is most convenient. Once you've tried it, you might realize you haven't turned your TV on in months!