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Lauren Pearce, Etienne Vongerichten, and Seth Prue
Technology has advanced in such a way that Media intake has changed completely. A daily consumer of media has never had it so easy because of the availability everywhere and the internet. Television is fighting against Internet sites and now has a ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ attitude as we see convergence between networks and distributers. Photography is competing with technology as it’s never been so easy to take a good photo with a simple iPhone. Movies compete with illegal pirating that seems to be everywhere and is not controlled very well because the quantity of people doing it.
Television
There are so many media in today’s world that it is hard to say that television is still dominating the media source like it did in the 1950s when T.V started. Since the Internet era, there has been more creative ways to get a daily intake of entertainment, originality, news and information (Straubhaar, 230). Many people in the 21st century receive information from social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram much faster than we would if we would have to wait until the next morning on the daily news channel. Of course, television will give you as much knowledge there is to know about a given situation. However, technologies like live video on social media has allowed us to be in the moment when news in happening live and perceive the information however we interpret it, before the news channels tell us what to think.
Audiences have been fading from the content television has been producing because of another social media that is growing strong every day and cost much less than networks. People prefer YouTube videos instead of shows on television because of the originality of the videos produced, and it’s the exact content they want to see (Straubhaar, 230). Younger viewers 13 – 24 years of age especially, since they dominate social media and technology changes a lot better, they are the ones preferring YouTube (67%) over television (33%) (Becker, 2016). On top of this, YouTube is free to use and sign up for as long as the viewer is fine seeing an ad every couple videos.
Entertainment is another area in which television is lacking because of the wide industry of video games (Straubhaar, 230). Gaming has taken the attention span since its popularity started growing with new consoles every couple of years, and new games being created constantly. For now, never mind the console gaming, because there’s games on phones, tablets, Gameboys, and even Smart T.V! Even television has joined their competitors and have made games that essentially will allow the viewer to not watch T.V.
Some say that television is working well with the internet by its side. Depending on how you look at it, you could agree. Instead of T.V networks posting ads all over the internet to watch T.V, instead they have made internet-only access sites that keep the viewers happy with the convergence (Olmsted, 597). An example