Lessons In TV Ecology

I’ve finally done it. I’ve joined the digital TV age. Of course, I slept through the installation guy’s arrival and had to phone Telus and have him turn around and stop by again. We might live in the digital age, but my animal brain still sleeps and dreams like it was 50,000 B.C.

I decided to get digital TV because Telus, in trying to compete with Shaw Cable (which has branched into Telus’ telephone territory), had developed TV service which offered more choices in terms of bundles of channels. Given the unnatural selections we are so often forced to take just to get the channels we want, I jumped at this chance.

The sad fact is that in a couple of years when the Canadian Radio and Television Commission’s ruling to open up cable choices completely comes into effect there will be a lot fewer channels to choose from. For example, I very much wanted Book TV (a channel name which for many both inside and outside the industry sounds like an oxymoron). But how many people who are avid TV watchers are also big book fans? Some, obviously – but enough to build a sufficient subscription base upon?

For all the talk of niche markets, most TV viewers want the same sorts of things. We want good regular TV series’, movies, news and some occasional controversy. Yes, we each want other kinds of TV viewing, but not the same type of viewing. I can’t even remotely imagine what type of person would think a golf channel was interesting. Many people would agree with me, even golfers who prefer playing to watching other people play. There just might be enough fans of this, though, to support a channel. Then what about something like W, the Woman’s Channel? Presumably they’ve got the potential viewership, but what was originally intended to be a liberating force for women has become a channel much like any other with reruns of women-friendly TV series and liberal sprinklings of chick flicks.

What often happens is that these channels begin to look more and more like every other channel, because that’s where the mass of the viewershiip is. TV series and films are the kinds of entertainment we have in common, for the most part. The TV ecology is still robust, but the balance is maintained at the cost of many unsuccessful ‘species.’

Looming over all of this, though, is the specter of the financial losses. The big networks are increasingly resembling the cable networks in their pay structure just to make ends meet. TV is constantly under siege by things like video games, the internet, films, DVD’s, radio and countless other entertainments. And all of these media (except for video games) complain that the money is tight – a harsh lack of sentiment you will find echoed by most major North American industries.

Could it be that we have so many choices and our interests are so thinly spread that few businesses can make enough money to survive anymore? Have we become victims of our own economic diversity? In his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph A. Tainter argues that ancient Rome had become so economically diverse and so far-flung that its economy was unsustainable no matter how high taxes were raised. Our consumeristic freedom of choice may well lead to the failure of our civilization.

Hmmm… When it comes to collapse my money is actually on a mass brain spasm brought on by a confusion of multiple remote controls. I’ve had three such spasms in the last hour. No one ever said choices didn’t come at a cost. But I’ve got what I asked for and you’ll get my remotes from me when you can pry them from my cold dead hands.