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Streaming services dominate television
NETFLIX
Regular television is dying. It's a well-known fact that Netflix has permanently changed
American watching habits. Despite being around for close to two decades, cable companies are only now responding.
It's no secret that the best television of the past 15 years wasn't broadcast for the masses. With the exception of "The Office" and maybe "Lost," the biggest television events have belonged to streaming services and niche subscriptions.
Cable companies' near-monopoly on service, which is a topic for another time, has given them the opportunity to resist adapting, upgrading or even changing their most basic services.
An online TV subscription service named Aereo went head to head with a few cable companies in the highest court a few weeks ago. It rebroadcast conventional TV online for much, much cheaper rates. Broadcasting companies sued and won, and Aereo shut its doors only days after the
decision.
That tells us two things. First, cable companies would rather sue than change conventional TV subscriptions or compete in any way. And second, its 21st century competitors can't go about releasing the same, or even similar content.
We all know streaming services dominate the landscape. It's convenient, unconstrained by schedules, and best of all, cheaper than any other service per-video. I'm really surprised that Netflix isn't more ubiquitous than it is already. It's flat out better than conventional cable in nearly every way.
The one thing it can't keep up with
is the release date. The producers of the content still have that edge. While I'm someone who can wait for the latest season of "Parks and Recreation" to hit the 'Flix, some can't. Netflix and its ilk realized this.
"Orange is the New Black" and "House of Cards," two of the most buzzworthy and popular shows of the year were produced by Netflix. They bypassed the industrial production companies and won.
Hopefully the cable companies won't invoke some arcane bylaw to sweep Netflix's feet out from under it. Even if they make an attempt, Netflix, unlike Aereo, is as established as it comes.
Alongside HBO, Showtime and related companions, specialty TV will take even further control in the coming years. This is good and bad, but mostly good.
It's good because television, for the first time in its history, will not be written for the least common denominator. It won't be chained to prime time ad slots and even worse,
the ad companies' demands. TV will be about product first, show time second. The History Channel might be able to run, you know, historical shows.
In my perfect setup, a customer would subscribe to a set number of channels with a checklist. Bloated packages and pre-sets would be pared down to news, sports and your dozen favorite channels. Let the multi-trillion dollar industry hash out the rest of the details.
And that's the best part of these changes that subscription and streaming services bring. They're forcing cable companies to compete in a way out of which they can't negotiate or sue. Unlike consumers, they have power to change TV forever. And they've already started.
FACEBOOK
Wil Kenney is a junior from Leawood studying English. Find him on Twitter @wilkennev.
Social media alters interpersonal relations
It's been ten years since Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook took over the Internet and forever changed the ways we interact with one another. Two years later came the rise of Twitter, followed by Instagram, then Snapchat and then — you get the idea.
But does social media truly connect us and make us more interpersonal? Studies from across the board, including Facebook's recent controversial study in which it altered more than 600,000 subjects' news feeds suggest social media makes us depressed, according to Time
Magazine.
Some studies suggest that there is no strong correlation between the use of social media and rates of depression because the tech is fairly new, but Facebook was also developed at the time when Internet use in the United States was already on an incline, and Americans were lonelier than ever, according to Stephen Marche, contributing writer for The Atlantic, in his article "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?"
It's a wonder how something that was built off the basis of connecting others can make people sad or
lonely; it's important to understand because interpersonal communication is far different than that of digital means and they vary in a way that requires clarity to understand and
analyze. The best thing to do is to recognize which relationships matter the most and insure their value isn't being cheapened by the convenience or accessibility of your relationships online.
Harrison Drake is a senior from Overland Park studying Journalism.
Find him on Twitter
@Harryson, Ford
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