I rather like the ending as described in Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. Television, as we know it, was done in by a commercial for a tongue scraper which was both uniquely repulsive and wildly successful. The result was that people would turn off their televisions in disgust (thus driving down ratings), but still go out and buy the product. This made the tongue-scraper company (and its many imitators) anxious to buy more commercial time, and the television networks desperate to sell it, in a self-reinforcing feedback loop w/r/t execration and viewership. Just before the end, the only thing ABC could afford to air were 24/7 marathons of Happy Days until Henry Winkler was receiving death threats.
I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. There are a couple of components to what we define as “television”:
Viewing technology:
That continues to change over time - B&W, NTSC and HDTV. And new we are even seeing 3D HDTV.
Transmission technology:
Again, our concept of “television” continues to evolve - broadcast (ie rabbit ears), cable, pay per view, streaming web. Pay per view and web continue to operate as two separate media channels, but I suspect that will converge over the next decade.
Content:
Surprisingly, this has stayed relatively consistent, until recently. Until the internet, most television content was provided by tv networks or films converted to tv format. But between YouTube, the proliferation of cheap video cameras and even inexpensive editing and effects software, we are at a point where pretty much anyone can create tv content on some level.
Business model:
Again, this has, until now, been a relatively constant mix of advertising-based, subscription and pay per view services.
I suppose the question is not “when will television end” but “what will television look like in 5/10/20 years?”
As others have pointed out, it’s not clear if you’re talking about the technology or the content. For the last fifty years television has been modern culture; the two are indivisible, and it’s impossible to understand modern culture without understanding television. It’s not just that television is synonymous with modern culture. It is modern culture. It’s what we do. What we are. Teacher, mother. Secret lover if you have cable. And not just in the West, everywhere. Magazines, newspapers, novels are nothing in comparison to the awesome power of television. It brings us together and makes us whole. Without it we are empty vessels.
Over the last decade some people have abandoned television purely for the internet - the BBC gives me Dr Who, whereas unlimited broadband gives me Japanese swimsuit fetish porn and Dr Who - but we are in a minority. We few. We unhappy few. We band of individuals, forever alone.
I’ll posit another question; when is television likely to end as a communal experience? On Christmas Day, 1977, more than half of the population of the United Kingdom sat down and watched that year’s Morecambe & Wise Christmas Special. I surmise that the following day almost everybody in the country had seen it, or knew someone who had seen it, and could quote it. It was like the virus from 28 Days Later, which turned Britain into a nation of blood-crazed hypermobile zombies. Except not quite so drastic.
Nowadays television seems a lot more fragmented, but on the other hand the internet allows us here in the UK to see what’s going on in the US - Breaking Bad, for example, was being hyped up by the UK press long before you could see it on an actual television set over here - and at the same time it allows both of us to see what’s going on in Korea, for example. So that we can all share jokes about Pauly Shore and the Jerky Boys and all the other cultural things that you enjoy in the United States of America so much. Andrew Dice Clay, there’s another example. I would never have heard about him if I didn’t have the internet. As it stands, I can look an American in the eye and engage in conversation with him or her, because I have heard… and Gallagher, the comedian with the watermelons. And so on.
“The word is half Greek and half Latin. No good will come of it.” -C.P. Scott, editor, Manchester Guardian, 1928
Ashley, that post is the best in the thread. Thanks for it and for your redefinition of the question!
In that case, television will never end - there will always be a need to see things happening in other places.
Yes, but I have a feeling the computing power needed for the interaction expected of a “holodeck” would be immense even 100 years from now. The holographic equivalent of large-screen TVs, where images are displayed but no interaction is expected, will almost certainly be commonplace by 2112.
When they stop having the Super Bowl, the Olympics the FIFA World Cup, and royal weddings and coronations.
This assumes that the answer is not, “It already has”; the mainstream popularity of the VCR, and especially now with DVRs, has eliminated the primary component of a “communal event”; the need to be doing it at the same time as everybody else.
I should probably point out that a holodeck would require technology utterly inconceivable. It may seem like a simple change to you, but the actual mechanics of doing it involve creating arbitrary momentum on arbitrary beams of like. That might not be possible, let alone feasible.
Yes, although the display devices would most likely take the form of goggles, not flat screens. The display technology is virtually here already–the smartphone market is pushing cheap, small, very hi-res screens in a way that hasn’t happened before. And graphics chips, although they have a long way to go before achieving true photorealism, continue to make tremendous progress.
I give it <20 years before we have really compelling visual fidelity, to the point where it will fool your brain in limited circumstances.
I think television will definitely be around for another 10 years - and probably another 20 or 30. More and more people will watch things online, but there will be a contingent that will stick primarily with television. Their numbers will dwindle as time goes on, but they won’t suddenly disappear.
There are still many people in this world who write checks. There are plenty of mom & pop businesses that don’t even have web pages - and many more that only have a Facebook page. I don’t know how many people currently watch TV on CRT televisions and not flat screens, but it’s probably still in the millions. Hell, I actually used a floppy disk this past weekend (not as a coaster). Even when technologies are usurped by better technologies, the old ones stick around for quite some time.
To put things even more in perspective, there are people still running Windows XP. In fact, it appears that over 40% of computer users are using XP (cite). That operating system came out over a decade ago. Ten years just isn’t quite as long as it seems when it comes to technological turnover on a large scale.