Yahoo! reports on a study that shows broadband users are watching less old-fashioned TV. The data is welcome, but this has been a trend since the early days of the Internet, more than ten years ago.
It's not hard to figure out why: you get to choose what you look at, instead of being forced into the ancient "channel" system where you have to watch something at a certain time (and Tivo, successful as it is, has a limited lifespan, since it just props up old-style TV). You also don't have to sit through 12 minutes of commercials to watch 18 minutes of tepid cable programming.
What's more, IP TV is booming, with recent hits like Live Aid and the shuttle launch drawing hundreds of thousands of watchers.
What's really sad is that Congress and the FCC are still trying to regulate old-fashioned TV, as if anyone really cares about it. The squabble over the best way to transition to broadcast HD TV would be humorous if it was not holding back the more intelligent use of that broadcast spectrum.
In the future, we'll get our TV over broadband or by satellite. The notion of putting up broadcast towers and beaming a signal will seem quaint. And our lawmakers should stop fooling around and do something useful, like abolishing the FCC entirely--which will happen right after pigs fly.