Dubai: Is the good old idiot box on its way out? The days of the television room being the family watering hole where members loved to gather and collectively, laugh, smile or cry over a movie, frown over a news bulletin while they had dinner, might soon become a thing of the past.
In a reader’s poll conducted by Gulf News, nearly 60 per cent of readers said they do not watch TV and prefer watching shows and movies online. Others log on YouTube to watch TV programmes, according to the poll.
The here-and-now generation wants to watch anything, anywhere, anytime and believe in downloading on demand. With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, interaction and participation are the name of the game. People would much rather be part of a programme than just watch something from a distance.
That makes YouTube one of the most popular mediums. Own your own channel, post your own videos and have an instant dedicated following as things go viral. More and more digital media companies such as Amazon Studio are now commissioning their own series for their own dedicated followers available on subscription basis.
Take the case of Yousuf Hamad, 26, a newly married engineer living in Sharjah. “I have no time to sit in front of the idiot box and prefer watching news, videos on live streaming on my phone while I am on the move,” he said.
Hamad prefers to download the movies or TV series that he has heard of through his friends on the Facebook or Twitter and watch them at his leisure. He limits television viewing to weekends when he has time to sit around the box with family for a meal.
Aya Hamam, 23, a fresh management graduate from American University, feels the new digital sphere gives the younger generation a wide variety of choice and the freedom to download. “I feel in some years the television will become obsolete. I use it only to watch what is on my laptop on a larger screen. I like the community feeling of doing something on social media which is interactive and there is instant communication and comments from others watching it,” she said.
Naintara Joshi, a Dubai housewife who loves cooking, thinks television has become archaic. “ I prefers subscribing to my favourite food channels on my smartphone. I am spontaneous and want the recipe just when I plan for what I would like to cook for my family. The web and the subscription channels give me that freedom. I can’t be bothered to switch on the idiot box and wait one of the channels to run a cookery programme that features precisely what I want to see,” she said.
The youth today want their information tailored to their taste, instantly, on the move, and at their fingertips, said Farrukh Naeem, digital strategist and social media consultant based in Abu Dhabi. “Conventional TV can’t give people the news as raw and as instantly as social media — and you can clearly see that shift when you look at the average number of hours people spend on their phone consuming content,” he said.
He said that TV viewing is dropping as young people multi-task most of the time, and would hate to sit in front of a tube, when they can get everything customised and on demand on the high definition screen in their pocket, ready to be responded to and shared.
“As a digital marketer I am also seeing a major shift of budgets from TV to digital and social media; the amount of money you need just to produce a TV spot can get you thousands of clicks and views online,” he added.
Sami Raffoul, general manager of Pan Arab Research Centre, who has a pulse on the changing trends in the region, begs to differ. “This is an illusion that people no longer watch television. The definition of television in its classic form is changing but if anything, its boundaries and borders have crashed and it is expanding in a limitless environment on the expressway of digital technology.”
He said that TV is not just the box, it is the actual broadcast content, it is the act of absorbing material prepared by a broadcaster and engaging the viewer.
“In that sense all live streaming, videos, YouTube content comes under its purview. Now you might be able to participate or interact with the content,” he said.
Raffoul said that social media, be it Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, is a parallel world where people post personal things like we had the post card in earlier times and people wanted their friends to know which place they visited and what they did.
“But even within the social media, when people post their video snippet that comes under the purview of what we call television. Our fascination with broadcast content will remain forever; the shape and content of television may change but as long as a broadcaster prepares video material for a community of viewers, television will always be there,” he said.
