Having an Episode

At Marginal Revolution, economist Tyler Cowan muses on what moving to the Web will do to TV programs:

1. Individual episodes are more complex and less likely to be self-contained. To watch only one show of Lost or [Battlestar Galactica] leaves you baffled. But who can make sure he catches every episode? What if you want to leave the country for a while? Now if you have missed a show, you can use the Web to keep in touch with the longer and more integrated story. You will do this even if you, like I, find web viewing distasteful and inconvenient. Not everyone can afford TiVo, and some of us still need Yana to operate the remote and indeed the service itself.

This mechanism will raise the intellectual quality of TV.

2. Perhaps the time lengths of programs will vary more. Has The Sopranos gone on a nearly two-year hiatus? How about a fifteen-minute web shortie to keep us interested?

3. (Some) webcasts will be reproducible on iPods. You will show the highlights of episodes to your friends. Perhaps many producers will make episodes to stress "the best two minute stretch or skit" rather than the show as a whole. Just as the song is outliving the album, perhaps the skit will outlive the show.

4. Might it, as Mark Cuban suggests, support soap operas in real time? What better to watch on your work computer, during work hours? In the longer run, the more entertaining your computer becomes, the more people will be paid by commission; blame blogs for that too.

5. TV on the web, in essence, shortens the release window for ancillary products. How big a deal is the DVD in six months' time if a web version exists now? And what does shortening the release window do? It will be harder to figure out what is a hit. It will lower movie budgets. It will increase the relative advantage that low-cost drama has over special effects spectaculars. Surely you can think of more effects on this count.

As regular readers of this blog (if there are any) know, I have been downloading Lost every so often, but most every other TV show I watch I rent via Netflix (or, less frequently, from my local video rental store). I absolutely love the new Battlestar Galactica, but I would rather watch it on DVD than as a download because I like the surround sound mix (geeky me saw the original Battlestar Galactica movie in 1978 in the theater in Sensurround--remember that?), plus I am not wild about the picture quality of downloaded shows. Depending how much I like the show, that's not a big deal (and the picture quality is better than pre-cable TV reception I used to get at various times in the dim and distant past--or even Time warbner cable on certain days).

One consequence of the Webization of TV shows is that producers may at some point not be beholden to the time constraints imposed by network or cable channels--which is 44 minutes sans commercials for a one-hour show and 21 minutes for a 1/2 hour show. Just about every TV show's DVD commentary at some point mentions how much they had to pare down the script or the film episode to fit in those time frames. If the "time slot" ultimately disappears, and all shows are standalone episodes that are downloaded independent of any other program, there is no reason for it to be any particular length. Episodes can therefore be as long as they need to be--although I suspect many will stick to conventional lengthts just to keep from freaking too many viewers out, at least at first.

I expect that DVD extras will ultimately become more important to make them marketable, but I really don't see much difference from the way things are done now. For example, in the past I've (and others have, too) methodically videotaped (what we used to do before Tivo) programs that I wanted to watch over and over, and those I really liked I would buy on VHS or DVD when they were officially released, for reasons of picture quality, better editing out of commercials, etc. I have every Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode (well, almost every episode--damn you, Gorgo!) that I taped from Comedy Central/Sci-Fi over the years, but I still buy the DVD sets when they come out.

Ultimately, what I expect to happen is the increased merging of the Internet, computers, and home entertainment systems--which is happening quickly already. At the same time, with the pressure on studios/producers to provide Webcast programming, compression quality will get better, and at some point in the future, the Internet will simply be the way programs are delivered, just like cable is now. Yes, cablecasting will continue to exist, just like some people still receive programs over the air using aerials. But we can kiss the "time slot" goodbye. And good riddance. It was always too much trouble to figure out when something was on anyway--especially when they used to move shows all over the place.

The trouble is, it may make "flipping around" that much harder. Which may or may not be a bad thing.