YouTube Has Built a TV Network

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by: Lynette Webb

So this is a tad flippant. But it illustrates a point I think isn’t made often enough… that watching clips on YouTube or GoogleVideo or any of their ilk is, from a consumer’s perspective, watching TV.

Click image to enlarge.

OK, I grant you there are still some differences in experience when Internet videos can only be watched on a small sized PC screen. But we’re not that far away from streaming video to TV. I remember when people said WiFi would never take off; well despite all the hiccups that’s now over the initial hurdles and increasingly becoming a standard feature of broadband installation. So, the next step of hooking up other screens, like TVs, isn’t that far away. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we’ll be reading emails or doing our internet banking on the TV screen, but watching videos? We already do that on TV, so who cares whether it’s coming from a PC or from a DVD?

Adding to this perception of watching YouTube et al as being like watching TV is the fact that TV shows are on them… whether they be old series on GoogleVideo available for purchasing, or snippets from just-screened TV shows on YouTube, they’re out there. For example, I now consider myself a viewer of The Colbert Report TV show, despite the fact that no UK broadcaster has yet gotten organised enough to show it in the UK… thankfully YouTube is filling the void. 

Image from Flickr CC www.flickr.com/photos/michaelhenderson/23230042/ thanks to Michael Henderson
Quote from adage.com/columns/article.php?article_id=112374

Original Post: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/267334469/