The Comfort of the Couch

January 2007

In the last few weeks the media have been full of recaps of 2006 and forecasts for 2007. I won’t add my prognostications to the mix; frankly, I don’t think I have anything insightful to say. In fact, I’m still reeling just trying to absorb and comprehend all the events of this past year. On the world scene, the news is constantly dismal: Iraq, the Middle East, terrorism, the environment, and yes, we have been able to add a new word to our vocabulary of dangers—polonium.

On the bright side, at least the media world has offered us countless ways to escape. It seems that every week, technology and brilliant creative people come up with a new platform, screen or device to help us listen to music, catch up on a show we missed, watch a documentary, see how our beloved sports teams are doing, and for news junkies, see the latest headlines.

If you think back to a year ago, The Walt Disney Company and Apple iTunes Store had just recently announced their groundbreaking deal whereby episodes of a number of shows were made available for download for $1.99 each. That was a watershed moment in the media industry, and the raft of developments since have been mind-boggling.

I am certainly not one of the early adopters of new technologies—kids and young adults are. I am a middle-aged baby boomer. I like to watch TV shows on the TV set, comfortably ensconced on my couch (more about the couch in a minute). And the DVR is undoubtedly one of the great technological advances of our times. No more angst over missed programs or movies. But on those nights when I can’t catch an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or Numb3rs at the time it airs, and the DVR has been completely programmed by another member of the family, it is such a relief to know that I can watch those shows on my computer on the various broadband video players available. Yeah, the video can be a bit shaky and the audio is sometimes out of sync with the lips, but it’s fun. And DVDs are phenomenal. I’ve been known to buy several seasons of a favorite show and then create my own marathon evenings when I select the scenes I love the most and watch them in whatever order I want. Ah, the sense of power! I build my own schedule and watch what I want to watch.

While watching TV solo can be a great tonic for stressed-out working mothers, I have to admit, there is something missing, and here the couch comes into play. Some of my most memorable TV-watching experiences—from Bewitched to “Who Shot J.R.?”; from Armstrong’s steps on the moon to the crumbling Berlin Wall; from FIFA World Cup games to the Olympics—all happened while seated on the couch surrounded by family and friends. Smaller devices and screens give us much more freedom to watch what we want where and when we want. But I wouldn’t want this trend to lead us away from having shared experiences.

In a recent interview with Steven Spielberg, I was really relieved to see I’m not the only one who feels this way. “I’m most perplexed by this desire to watch TV and movies on smaller screens like iPods, phones and laptops,” said Spielberg. “If this really catches on and the industry decides to write directly for the mini-multiplex, directors will subliminally begin to abandon wide shots for extreme close-ups and everything will start looking claustrophobic. This nice habit of appointment television and looking forward to a Friday night movie could be replaced by entertainment on the run, and then the movie and TV industry would completely merge with America’s growing penchant for drive-throughs instead of sit-down experiences.”

See, sit-down experiences, here we are back on the couch. But I would be a fool if I didn’t pay attention to that band wagon going by outside my window, the one with all the youngsters ditching couches and TV sets, linear channels and their schedules in favor of the “wherever, whenever” style of enjoying music and programming. It is them—the kids, teenagers and young adults—who will determine which direction the media industry will take. Just as we baby boomers influenced Madison Avenue like no other age group, today’s youth is determining the media business models of tomorrow.

Throughout this issue, we look at many aspects of this changing media landscape: the cable industry’s impact on innovative, lower-cost drama series; multitasking media-savvy kids; the evolution of television in Latin America; and exclusive interviews with Globo’s Roberto Irineu Marinho and TV Azteca’s Ricardo B. Salinas. In our One-on-One interview with Ted Harbert, the president and CEO of the Comcast Entertainment Group, he states, “The days of dedication to the linear channel are waning. The game has changed. It’s changed forever.”