My Migration from TV to the Web

31Jul08

One of the many benefits of working at a firm with as wide and diverse a base of products and services as BT, is the ability to easily branch out and get involved with other areas that interest and facinate me.  One recent example was an off-hours work project, that involved an ad-hoc team taking a closer look at how our ‘webby’ teams could help improve BT’s IPTV product, called BT Vision.  While working on this initiative, I got to thinking just how I, as a formerly major consumer of TV, movies, and other video content, have changed my viewing habits in the past 5 years and what I turn to now when I’m on my own free time.

Like many others, I used to come home from work on a weekday, and plop my bum on my sofa and begin to surf the huge numbers of cable channels for programs to will away the hours.  This was 5 years ago, and I would guess I was spending on average 3-4 hours/day in front of the TV on work-days, and around 5-6 on a weekend day (sad, yes, I know).  How times have changed, I now watch exactly 0 hours of cable/aerial (the regular channels if you only had an antenna) TV.  But instead my time now is spent on the web with similar hours quoted above except now in front of my laptop rather than my TV.

Below, I’ve broken down my viewing habits (20-30 hours/week):

My Web Experience:

• Work Related (Given my current focus on open source software and online communities, I spend a large amount of time researching, discovering, and sharing ideas via the web)
• RSS feeds of my favorite topics
  1. People Blogs (Friends, Colleagues, Internet celebrities)
  2. Technology (Engadget, TechCrunch, etc.)
  3. Sports/World News (CNN, ESPN, etc.)
  4. Car News/Articles (Autoblog, AutoWeek, Car & Driver, etc.)
  5. Finance News/Articles (FT, Economist, Forbes, etc.)

• Personal Emails (Gmail/Yahoo)
• TV Shows on Demand (BBC iPlayer, YouTube, and many other smaller video sites)
• Live Sporting Events (NFL.com, BBC, and some other sources that have questionable legalities)
• Social Sites (Facebook, LinkedIn)
• Random discovering (Google, Wikipedia)

The biggest reflection from me is I’ve changed from not only a consumer of content, but also a contributer (this blog and others, Facebook, and car forums), which I suppose is the basis of the ‘Web 2.0′ buzz for the past two years.  Makes me wonder how I’ll be using my free time in another 5 years time.  I’ll leave that speculation for the futurologists out there and go back to enjoying my RSS feeds and BBC programs .

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Tags: Web TV Content Video