In a recent PFF paper I argued that “We Are Living in the Golden Age of Children’s Programming,” and showed how, despite incessant complaints by many policymakers:
the overall market for family and children’s programming options continues to expand quite rapidly. Thirty years ago, families had a limited number of children’s television programming options at their disposal on broadcast TV. Today, by contrast, there exists a broad and growing diversity of children’s television options from which families can choose.
I then documented there and in my book, Parental Controls & Online Child Protection:
- the many excellent family- or child-oriented networks available on cable, telco, and satellite television today;
- the growing universe of religious / spiritual television networks;
- the many family or educational programs that traditional TV broadcasters offer; or
- the massive market for interactive computer software or Internet websites for children.
And every time I turn around I find another great show, service, or site for families to choose from. Continue reading →
Around this time last year, a relative 20 years my senior was asking me what I was writing about and I mentioned how I’d been collecting anecdotes and stats for what was becoming our “Cutting the Video Cord” series here. That series has documented how the Internet and new digital media options are displacing traditional video distribution channels. We’ve been exploring what that means for consumers, regulators and the media itself.
I asked this relative of mine if they spent any time watching their favorite shows, or even movies, online or through alternative means than just their cable or satellite subscription. He said he didn’t because of the lack of an easy way to find all their favorite shows quickly. Specifically, he lamented the lack of a good “TV Guide” for online video. I explained to him that, for most of us 40 and under, our “TV Guide” was called “a search engine”! It’s pretty easy to just pop in any show name or topic into your preferred search engine and then click on “Video” to see what you get back. Nonetheless, I had to concede that random searching for video wouldn’t necessarily be the way everyone would want to go about it. And it wouldn’t necessarily organize the results in way viewers would find useful–grouping things thematically by genre or offering the sort of related programming you might be interested in seeing.
Well, good news, such a service now exists. Katherine Boehret of the
Wall Street Journal brought “Clicker.com” to my attention in her column last night, a terrific new (and free) video search service: Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.