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TV As Content Parent to Digital Tech: Multimedia's Insufferable Inbred Paradox

Internet TV
Internet TV
Public domain

When the Internet was first conceived as a civilian offshoot of military technology, it was supposed to be this separate entity far and way from television airwaves. The digital age was designed as an info superhighway for computer interactivity and not an extension of TV commerce. But since old school media bean counters feared the new medium and could not compete with it, they set out to turn the web into the new idiot box at one with what you see on TV. And this has doctored online quality and shortened the consumer shelf life of content outside cyberspace.

Now almost every net news portal has a video TV screen pop up that gets in the way of the literary uncluttered space saving style we were once used to. You cannot visit an entertainment website without some TV/cable media tie-in, be it a channel, program schedule or affiliate. Meanwhile, social media has been compromised to link commentary to what you see offline. So much so that the communication addiction is a pastime in itself that is more dependent upon the news of the day or trivial makeshift media than on viable content anywhere that you must pay or watch ads for.

What this does is lead to an ill transported saturation of TV interactivity where offline culture is no longer needed. That in turn amounts to less consumerism and an economy based on devalued content so folks can replace it with text messaging as entertainment. It also alienates future surf fans who may see that the world wide web is too much in bed with standard media to be the electronic oasis that it once was. By making over the web into an extension of the television and movie biz, the content-wants-to-be-free credo of E techies has divested the sales of mainstream media.

This is why the online pirated part 3 in the Expendables action film series opened to lackluster box office. It is why a photo bug start-up like SnapChat that offers free service and has no income is propped up as being worth 10 billion dollars. The state of tech futures has gotten so bad that investors throw money at profits foreseen or projected that may never come to fruition. How can the info of users be worth that much when these freebie consumers have so many other payless digital options to take up their time in addition to offline content that they refuse to pay for?

Since collusive co-existence threatens its survival, standard media needs to break away from the fickle chaos of online choice and diversion and pursue offline exclusivity separate from wired or wireless communication. To do this it requires its own interactive counterpart to the Internet accessed via airwaves and not satellites, a remote controlled web TV network that is a self sustaining hybrid of broadcast technology and not a shared digital bottleneck best reserved for computers. The web works best as a library of information and not a carnival circus of too many entertainment options.

Offline media should be the web's distant cousin rather than content parent to busy netscape pastimes. In the quest to merge a multimedia pipeline, combining old world and new age content in one digital funnel dilutes and weakens competing business models. So much so that many new network TV series and movies fail to reach an audience that is preoccupied in cyberspace. In its effort to use the web as its advertizing hub, standard media has contributed to a one size fits all center stage of online distribution that has migrated content consumers away from offline sources of revenue.

Network and cable expansion online cuts into its own bottom line and wastes bandwidth using the digital divide and downsized gadgetry to turn the web into an ad campaign to promote redundant old fashioned media product. Standard media monopolization of cyberspace force feeds content behind the times and does not appeal to the viral mentality of digital short attention spans. It creates an atmosphere where social media takes the place of entertainment consumption. All this overkill gives fans and consumers no reason to watch TV or go to the movies if they can get everything they want online.