If Over the Air Television Were to Disappear, Would You Miss It? Would You Pay to Watch the Networks Not Because You Wanted To, but Because You Had To?

For at many decades, for as long as anyone can remember, television was free. In fact other alternatives to the advertising model that the major networks used did not come about until the seventies. Many of you may wonder what I mean when I say that free television is disappearing, is this about the government again, and is it about cable and satellite providers forcing the hand of the television industry, what is this all about exactly? Well you may want to look at the national networks that were offering the free content to begin with; the bottom line, according to an article through the Associated Press, and these commercials that are showing on over the air television, is that broadcasters cannot afford to subsidize increasing production costs through advertisements. Broadcaster's efforts at making their material available online have cannibalized any revenue they used to make through commercials as that content does not include as many commercials and are not as lucrative. Broadcasters would also like to morph into cable channels themselves, but at this point it would appear as though the networks who supply content to the affiliates in your neck of the woods are the only entities that would be able to do so. This means that you would no longer be able to receive free programming from the networks over the air; stations would then have to consider whether they would then compete with the independent channels (who most likely would not loose any of their programming as much of it is already syndicated), or disappear altogether and fade into the night. Your local affiliates cannot exist on showing news broadcasts and local variety shows all day long, and I would expect those remaining to go back to turning off the transmitter at midnight, as many stations had in the past.

For many this shift confirms what they had feared all along, and this plays out as a doomsday scenario for those who rely on free over the air television as their primary form of communication. Not everyone can afford an Internet connection, and not even is willing to deal with the inconvenience of fighting at the library for either a seat to use a computer or to plug in their computer to use the free Wi-Fi that many public libraries now provide. At the same time, the Internet, free or not, is part of the reason why broadcasters can no longer provide the free service. Online piracy also involves a lot of what occurs on YouTube, which is the promulgation of television shows in an unauthorized manner. In order to fight this broadcasters have released content themselves online, but haven't figured out a way to monetize that traffic. Advertisement space that used to be sold for millions of dollars in the past goes for a fraction of the amount online; in fact I would be surprised if that same ad space goes for ten thousand dollars online. People do not necessarily have to click on ads for them to be profitable, as Google does pay something for the amount of times that content is viewed but it is nowhere near as much revenue as the old model provided.

The providers of cable television are paying fees to television channels for the right to carry their programming. The day may come where television broadcasters are making more money in those fees than they are from selling advertising space to corporations, and when that day comes, the novelty of free television is going to come into question. ESPN is making over three times as many from those fees as they were a year ago. Broadcast television is aligning itself with these cable channels in order to compete; ABC, Disney and ESPN are sort of one in the same, and Comcast, a cable television provider, has bought out NBC.

What all of this means for people at home is that you may have to pay to watch anything that is being shown to a national audience; so your favorite shows like Heroes, The Office, and many others you are going to start paying for. Personally I think it is a matter of if, not when; can you imagine a future where the only free content is that provided by ION and PBS? The bulk of network affiliates have relied so much upon their networks content that they simply could not survive on their own. Larger markets have always had compelling local content; in fact this is how some of the popular talk shows of the nineties have come about, but smaller markets with fewer than 500,000 people, not so much. News broadcasting may take to the Internet where costs are low and opportunities will open up; we have already seen this happen with local newspapers.

The other issue in all of this is that while yes production costs have been increasing as national broadcasters are attempting to bring more sophisticated filmmaking techniques therefore making television shows appear more like a high budget movie the opinion of most is that television, in any form, just isn't as good as it used to be. With that in mind why would anyone want to pay for what used to exist for free, and will network television truly rise to the standard of cable television, or would it get lost in the shuffle? The real future of television is online, not in the cable model, so if broadcasters are willing to pull the plug on free over the air programming are they also willing to part with their efforts at bringing some of that broadcasting to the Internet? Will the Internet become even more of a graveyard for forgotten television programming than it already is? I also have to wonder, when network television broadcasters were plastering advertisements for their shows at the movie theater and anyplace that would have them, if I even want to watch the shows on cable television because of the principal of the whole thing. Network television is attempting to infiltrate public spaces out of sheer desperation, not because people really want to see it in all of the places where it is resurfacing, and we could do with less. The day may be approaching when the only episodes of The Office you watch on free over the air television are those that are already in syndication; you may not miss it, but you must admit it would be a bit weird ...