In about a week I will be moving up to Boston.  For the first time one of the calls I will not be making during this transition is to set up cable service.  We have decided to forgo paying for cable and just watch selected shows via the Internet.  Nowadays most prime-time shows are available within 24-48 hours on the major network sites.  There are also a bunch of other websites out there that stream TV content such as Hulu and Joost.  Sure, I won’t be able to watch all of the shows I like to watch now but that’s ok.

Not having cable will make me even more productive and buy back precious time to spend doing things that I care about a lot more than a one hour TV show that I watch just because it’s on.  Also, watching TV on my laptop saves me time because I don’t have to sit through all of the commercials.  A TV show which has been posted online generally only has a couple 15-30 second spots.  That makes an hour long show on a traditional TV only 45 minutes or so on the Internet.  Even if you watch a lot of TV, this by itself could greatly increase the amount of time you have for other things.

One of the even more interesting things is that as more people turn the Internet for their TV consumption, we’re going to continue to see additional features built in.  For instance, take what CNN did for President Obama’s inauguration.  In my opinion, CNN provided more value on their website because they had multiple camera angles, live conversation via Facebook, and it was mobile.  Need proof that it was successful?  Mashable reported that as of 3:30p ET, CNN.com had approximately 21.3 million live video streams since 6a ET, a high of 1.3 million concurrent streams at one time, 136 million pageviews, and over 4,000 Facebook status updates per minute during the broadcast.

On the morning of the inauguration CC Chapman recorded this video which I think explains this point perfectly:

I know I’m not the only one making this transition.  So, what does this mean for advertisers?  Let’s discuss in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.