Thursday, March 4, 2010

Is Watching TV a "Yesterday" Thing To Do?

When I consume my video media, I like to be sitting in my livingroom, with my MacBook Air in front of me, my iPhone within easy reach, a bottle of water nearby and some kind of food at the ready. Yesterday I watched the Shorty awards on my laptop, and it was tiring. The day before I watched “Up” on my 15” LCD screen, and it was suboptimal. When I watch TV, I want to lean back. I want to unwind. I want to give my eyes, maybe not a rest, but a change of scenery.

So when people say that livingroom TV watching is going away, that “Gen Y” does not watch television, and that their behavior will take over our world in the not too distant future – 3D TV be damned, I don’t fully buy it.

As someone who considers myself to be a “young [insert age here].” I do feel somewhat embarrassed saying this out loud. Is it because I straddle two generations – as a Gen Xer tucked between young Boomers and the seemingly endless millennial generation? Well, tonight I had an epiphany! It didn’t actually come to me organically but was vaulted at me by a very self-confident HBS I-Banker, who by the way, had no idea what FourSquare was and was irate to find that it did not come up in his Droid app store when he typed in “4.” But I digress.

This erudite MBA pointed out to me that, as someone who often works at home, I am in a unique sub-segment of the population. So the rule that “people watch tv on the best screen option available to them” is not completely false. It’s just that I typically have a better screen available to me than my office- and classroom-tethered brethren. Hmmmm… Duh.

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