(2 of 3)
As for live TV, I learned that cell-phone companies are glad to provide it. I test-drove the Flo TV service--one of several cell-TV options--on an AT&T LG phone, complete with a tiny retractable antenna that made it look like something you'd see in Couch Potato Barbie's living room. I set the tiny screen on a kitchen shelf and watched MTV as I peeled carrots. I tuned it to Morning Joe and balanced it inside my medicine cabinet, discovering an exciting new way to cut myself while shaving. So long as I had a signal and battery juice, I could go shopping, take the bus or go to a kids' soccer game and never, God help me, be out of reach of Wolf Blitzer.
Was it possible to replace TV? Sure. (The real question is how to get away from it.) And that may change TV as a cultural force.
For a good half-century, "watching TV" meant one thing. It was something you did at home, with friends or family, in front of a stationary machine in a dedicated room, preferably with snack chips. You experienced a broadcast exactly when and how millions of others did--same Bat-time, same Bat-channel--or you did not experience it at all. And unless you got proactive with a VCR, you did not copy, carry or remix what you saw. This was why mass media were culturally unifying (or homogenizing): those moments that mattered, we all saw in exactly the same way. (See the top 10 movie performances of 2008.)
Not anymore. Today TV broadcasts are just starting points, raw material to be curated in a collective online canon. During the election, I was immersed in political news and comedy, but I saw only a fraction of this material--interviews, skits, Joe the Plumber encounters--on a television. I saw bits embedded on blogs and on YouTube. I saw them straight up, or edited and surrounded by comments. If I saw the Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin on the liberal website Talking Points Memo and you saw it on the conservative Townhall.com did we really see the same program as each other--or as the shrinking number of viewers who still watch the 6:30 news?
More people watched Tina Fey's takedown of Palin online than on Saturday Night Live. And well they should. Why sit through 90 minutes waiting for the good bits when an army of online editors will separate the wit from the chaff? This isn't just a knock on SNL. The View, the nightly news--they're all albums, which the Web breaks down into singles.
That brings us to a truism about online video: it rewards brevity and scatters attention. That's true to an extent. Five to seven minutes seem to be the sweet spot for a webisode; "Baby Panda Sneezes" loses its magic after about 11 seconds. But a funny thing happened in my cable-free week: I found myself paying closer attention to the TV shows I watched online.
Here's the important physical fact that separates online from off-line TV: you're holding something. Watching old-school TV, you flop on the couch and let the medium wash over you. New school, you hold a screen in your hand, balance a laptop or sit at a desk. There's a small but constant effort, the tiniest bit of physical feedback.