07-28-2020, 03:20 PM
(07-28-2020, 12:47 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: During the last 1T television was basically limited to a handful of channels. Commentators mentioned that early television gave people common references. So in that limited aspect it was a unifier.
If television survives as a distinct medium, it may well be viable only if it consolidates down to only a few channels. Think of much of the programming being news, weather, and sports. Plus cheap to produce reality shows, cooking shows, etc.
There is plenty of material (feature films, TV series, and even cable-made programs) that can appear on TV channels. Reruns can play for years on digital subchannels.
Digital broadcasting originally allowed a longer range (about 120 miles) of signal than did the pre-digital analogue broadcasting (about 80 miles in rural areas, 50 in urban). We could see some of these markets merge, which might be clumsy (let us say Baltimore and Washington) or might not. Having South Bend and Fort Wayne in the same TV market might fit, with much of the broadcasting ending up as a few shared network channels (ABC. CBS, NBC, FoX, PBS, CW, and maybe i and My Network (will those two survive?) There will be more room for 'digital' subchannels.
Programming that has high production costs or expensive rights for which to pay (sporting events and concerts) will be made available on premium services... but eventually owners of the programming will need to find ways in which to sell it if it is on their hands. Should there be a serious downturn in the economy, then premium material may be rare because there might be too small a market.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.