Goodbye to Scheduled Television

At Christmas, we got a SMART blu-ray player to replace our old DVD player. This means we now have easy access to internet television from the comfort of our living room.

I haven't watched much TV over the last few years, partly because Jana tends to watch it to unwind and chooses programmes of no interest to me, partly because I have so much reading I want to catch up on, but mostly because I'm not organised enough to plan ahead the programmes I want to watch.

Well, internet TV has been a revelation. We only have access to BBC iPlayer and YouTube at the moment, plus a month trial subscription to NetFlix, but this still gives me everything I need and more.

In particular I've got hooked on watching nature documentaries on the iPlayer. Within the last couple of weeks, I've caught up with the available back catalogues of Countryfile, Coast, Nature's Weirdest Events, Frozen Planet, a few one-off programmes, plus the first episode of the incredible new David Attenborough series, Africa.

The television is going to become a battleground once again between me and Jana.

And it got me thinking, surely this is the death knell of scheduled television? I mean, what is the point of having programmes playing at set times of the day when all of this is at our fingertips?

Yesterday, driving home from work, they were having a discussion on Radio 4's PM about the relative benefits of scheduled TV versus catch-up TV, and it was really very apparent that scheduled TV had very little going for it. The main argument in its defence was that it made it easier for people to stumble across programmes they might not normally seek out themselves. Well, to me that's another way of saying it forces people to tune it to programmes they don't really like.

I'm now toying with the idea of cancelling our regular TV licence altogether and going fully "catch-up." Jana isn't quite ready to get up "normal tv," but once ITV Player and 4OD are available I think she might be persuaded.