We & TV are in our 70's - what about that cord? Part 2: What we have gained is high quality scripted streaming content

In the past ten years the television industry has been full of turmoil and failure, but is ending with a robust technology system and a fulfillment of the promise of The Golden Age of Television which began in 1947.

Ten years ago I began this blog with a four part series The Screen Writers Guild strike, technology, and the future of scripted television. In part four I wrote:

While the home entertainment industry struggles to cope with changes over he next 5-to-10 years, viewers who want to watch scripted tv will need to adapt. That’s us, folks. And that’s what this blog about.

Four years ago, apparently as an old viewer frustrated because the industry was struggling through a watershed period without a clear direction I wrote:

It's not a new Golden Age of Television. It has been the Era of Television. and it seems to me its headed for retirement. Now its the Era of Mobile Diversion

Two years ago I wrote with far more optimism and understanding:

Let's acknowledge the elephant or 500 pound gorilla or whatever in the room. Our Millennial granddaughter was never conditioned to watch TV on a schedule. There was never a time in her life that the programming was not "on demand." When she was young it was on a DVR or DVD. But as she reached her teen years, streaming video was at her fingertips on the internet.

Because of technology constraints when we began watching TV, we were conditioned by ABC, CBS, and NBC to watch entertainment TV between 8 pm and 11 pm daily, while the local channels brought us news and some syndicated shows between 5 pm and 8 pm. We had to choose at any particular time what show we wanted to watch. If we picked "Gunsmoke" on CBS, we simply could not watch what was on the other networks until Summer Reruns. If there were three good shows on at 9 pm, the best we could hope for was to watch two, one during the regular season and one in the summer. If there was nothing we wanted to watch at 8 pm, we had nothing to watch.

In mid-2015 at any time we can pick from hundreds of shows. We won't live long enough to see all the things we may want to see. It may even be possible to watch a series we were forced to miss in 1975 because of scheduling conflicts. Good grief!

Last year, in December, I wrote a post titled It is likely that 2017 will be TV's "Watershed Year" for the TV industry and for our household in which I noted the controversy over a TV executive who in frustration pointed out "there is too much television" and said:

Our senior household will begin experimenting with the near-exclusive use of internet streaming through CBS All Access and Hulu along with Acorn TV, Amazon Prime Video, Crackle, Feeln, and Netflix.

Well, we're still somewhat struggling through a learning process but the truth is it works and the content choice is nothing short of a dream, or maybe a 1947 fantasy, come to fruition.

There was a period that is called by some The Golden Age of Television which began in 1947 ended when on May 9, 1961 a "Greatest Generation" attorney and politician Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton N. Minow told the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters television had become  a "vast wasteland".

According to Wikipedia:

The term Golden Age (Greek: χρύσεον γένος chryseon genos) comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five (or more) Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first....

In 1947 the television industry, having ceased to be an infant, was a toddler trying figure out how to walk and talk. It was fun to watch the kid grow. In 1961 it had just entered puberty. By 1985 it was no longer an adolescent. After 70 years, in my humble opinion the corporate television industry now is mature.

The options of off-the-air (OTA) broadcast TV and cable/satellite TV delivery systems have worked well for decades and will continue. Internet streaming TV works and expands the content choices of the OTA broadcast network and cable channels by a factor of at least 20.

In fact, "channels" has taken on a new meaning. Consider these screenshots of our 27 "channels" from our Roku menu:

Since we are experimenting we still have our Dish Network Flex Pack with Local Channels and the Hopper equipment that goes with it. But by using the Hulu and CBS All Access "channels" on our Roku we have been watching ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC programs streaming mostly without commercials.

As it turns out Hulu was a critically important pioneer. As I noted ten years ago:

NBC offers full episodes of over 20 programs to be watched live through an internet connection - with ads, of course. Members of our household can watch these episodes on our 42" plasma "TV" which is really just a monitor without a tuner that connects directly to our computer and audio system.

To expand upon this, after trying out a deal with Apple to feed shows to iPods, NBC joined with Fox to create a venture called Hulu.com....

Is this going to change television? Zucker recently noted that NBC.com had 50 million video streams in October, 50% higher than the previous record, in May. "It's become a small cable channel in our universe," he said. Of the Hulu venture he said it was a "superstore" while NBC.com was a "specialty shop." He indicated that the digital issue is the biggest nightmare in his job. "Nobody has figured out the economic model yet. And if we don't figure it out soon, those dollars will turn to pennies."

Two years later Disney/ABC joined NBC and Fox in the Hulu venture as an owner as did Time Warner/Turner Broadcasting System in 2016.

It isn't perfect.

On Hulu ABC's streaming rights to "Grey's Anatomy" requires them to show very short commercials before the start of each episode and at the end of each episode. These really don't add viewing time when compared to watching through the Dish Hopper. NBC's "The Blacklist" is not available on Hulu.

CBS All Access offers all the network's prime time (and daytime and late night) programming with only the occasional commercial interruption showcasing CBS programming. Occasionally the commercial internet streams lock up before it starts which is irritating because it's in the middle of the show we're watching.

CBS All Access does provide a live stream of our local CBS broadcast channel. Somehow that eliminates some silly personal insecurity of an old guy who still remembers when live TV was our link to the world. It's silly because we have the internet to browse even on our phones.

Here's the kind of thing that does irritate an old guy. We've been watching CBS Sunday Morning with Sunday "brunchfast" since it began in 1979 with original host Charles Kuralt. Because of that we know its history. Originally offered at 9:00 am - 10:30 am ET/PT each Sunday, the San Franciso and some other Pacific Coast stations shifted it 6:00 am -7:30 am PT because of sports programming conflicts. Fortunately, by then we could record the show and watch it at our leisure. They do make the show available streaming immediately after its time zone scheduled broadcast - 10:30 am. That's later than we want to watch it.

And the fact is there are some special broadcast events that are best watched from our Dish Hopper DVR just behind the live feed skipping commercials. Award shows like The Emmys and The Oscars fall into that category. And though we are not a sports fan household, The Super Bowl is another example.

So if we drop our satellite TV service, we may have to adjust to some of the differences.

On the other hand, we have access to some "must see" programming simply not available outside streaming. And here is where we see what the future holds. Take another look at our Roku screen:

Right now we are using 27 "apps" which are "channels." The Cordcutting.com website Roku channel list is 5,190 channels long. Many are hidden from the Roku Streaming Channels menu but can still be added. Some aren't available to everyone everywhere. But there are far more than enough channels to meet anyone's needs. There are enough free channels to offer adequate entertainment to many.

For those of us who seek quality scripted TV, the number of high quality original shows offered by the cable premium channels such as HBO and Showtime has been supplemented with high quality original shows from Amazon and Netflix. Traditionally PBS has offered quality TV through its Masterpiece programming, much of which is actually British. Acorn TV provides access to additional British programming, plus some excellent shows from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and even some non-English-speaking European countries.

And the broadcast networks through Hulu and CBS All Access now provide original content not available on their broadcast network channels.

Which leaves me with the problem of non-premium cable channels in a streaming world, the subject of my next post in this series.