The End of Television as We Know It?

by Allison Dunatchik

As I was leaving my comparative politics class last Wednesday, my professor casually mentioned that we would be having a test review the following day, Thursday, from 9-10 p.m. That particular combination of day and time seemed oddly familiar to me and about 15 seconds later, I realized why. My comparative politics review, which I could most certainly not afford to miss, was to take place at the exact same time Meredith, Derrick, Christina, George, Preston, and Lizzy would be performing medical miracles and learning life lessons all while dancing around in a complicated love plot. I’m referring, of course, to the weekly happenings in ABC’s hit television show, Grey’s Anatomy.

I came back to my dorm room cursing my comparative politics exam for existing, ABC for scheduling Grey’s Anatomy during my exam review, and pretty much life in general. Mid-rant, however, my roommates reassured me that all, in fact, was not lost. I could simply watch Thursday’s episode for free on ABC’s website on Friday. This was quite possibly the best news I’d heard all day and I rushed to my laptop to check out the site.

Indeed, my roommates were correct and once again the day was saved by the wonders of modern technology and the internet. As I explored the website, I found that Grey’s Anatomy was not the only show ABC made available for online viewing. Other shows included Lost, The Nine, Six Degrees, Desperate Housewives, and Ugly Betty. Many of these shows I had been curious about but had never found it convenient to watch them at their scheduled times. Now, however, I could watch any one of them with a click of a button, day or night. I practically have no excuse not to.

This, of course, was presumably exactly ABC’s logic in providing this online service. People much like myself, enter the ABC website looking for a particular show, only to find themselves lured into watching one of the other shows available for online viewing – and hopefully hooked into it. This may encourage these online viewers to make more of an effort to watch their new show on television or perhaps even buy the previous season on DVD. However, I wonder if this new practice of television viewing à la internet may eventually render television unnecessary. Now that I know I can watch new episodes of Grey's Anatomy for free on ABC’s website at my own convenience (and with fewer commercials, I might add), suddenly my Thursday nights are freed up. If I happen to have nothing better to do I will certainly tune into ABC and watch, but no longer does the phrase “Thursday night at 9, 8 central” bear the same sense of urgency it once did.

Television
Internet
Internet Television
Entertainment
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