Can you call it tv when you don't watch it on one?

Who doesn’t remember running home to catch their favorite tv shows as a teen "I gotta get home now to watch Melrose Place or 90210” . Years back, everyone was heralding TIVO as the wave of the future “the new way everyone would be viewing television”. Of course, this put the ad world into a panic – "you mean you can skip over the ads?" YIKES. But, the tivo trend never took off.

The new big scary trend is TV content online. So, many of us are watching tv online for various factors (ease of use, immediacy, convenience). Even more interesting is exactly where the consumers watch tv online. Stats prove videos on facebook are one of the key components that drive traffic to custom pages. And, just this week Bloomberg reported that YouTube is in negotiations with both the NBA and the NHL to start broadcasting live basketball and hockey games... and who isn't on hulu watching family guy.

Granted, man cannot live by smart phone & laptop alone. Man still needs a big screen tv with surround sound - advertisers still need to keep their presence on traditional tv for the strength of it's presence & overall reach...

What does it all mean together? It means more ways to interact with the consumer. A commercial is no longer just a commercial. Once, it airs online everything is tracked and designed to gauge viewers preferences and behavioral data. It means that you can develop content to not only to live in a :30 second format, but you can program additional interactive aspects to further learn about your consumers in ways past marketers never dreamed of.

It means tv is a term that will now extend past the literal device and our kids will be staring at ipads with augmented reality avatars as someone quietly collects all the data. It means tv will be more interactive and interactive content will be more like tv programming. Basically, everyone just stepped up their game.

"How can I get work if I can't talk to you? by Julius Weil

It’s dead out there.” We’ve all heard the lament, or have we? Why are we struggling to bring in work? The answer is in the palm of our collective hands. Or Blackberry or iPhone. These smart phones, that are anything but. That cut out and cut off every conversation we attempt to have. It doesn’t matter if you’re a director on the Verizon network because you’re talking to a producer with an iPhone. they can’t hear you now…Click. Two iPhone users? Good luck, right to voice-mail. And if you get through dropped call followed by failed call, failed call, failed call. Think about it, the only person in America who never has a dropped call is Jack Bauer, and reception anywhere and his battery never runs out. Forget the Congressional investigations into banking or the health care debate. Congress needs to call the cell phone companies on the carpet and get them to raise cell phone quality and reliability to the standards of old analog corded phones Then we will be able to get through to creatives, producers and directors. We’ll be able to go back to what we did best in the good old days, dodging calls.