There are now more and more online companies offering TV services over the internet. There is free video available everywhere online. Is it the case that people are soon going to tire of traditional TV viewing and turn to their laptops instead?

Not only is everthing readily available online, but once you have found what you want to watch, it is now possible to connect your laptop to the TV. This almost eliminates the need to have access to TV channels.

The TV companies have people’s ignorance in their favour at the moment. Most wouldn’t even know that it was possible to connect their laptop to their TV, and more importantly, even if they did they wouldn’t have a clue how to go about it. Similarly, very few people know of everything that the internet has to offer. Because the internet is very much diluted with rubbish, it is difficult to see the really good bits sometimes. If more people knew of what was available it could well be that the TV services we have available to us today would decrease very rapidly.

Sky+ and other similar products now mean that users never actually have to watch any adverts. So if the TV companies cannot get viewers for the adverts that they run throughout programming schedules in order to fund the making of those programmes, how can they exist? The BBC obviously has the license fee (although their budgeting hasn’t been shown to be prefect of late), but the other operators have no real way of making very much money without their adverts.

There is now a requirement for the TV companies to be really innovative, really quickly. Time is still on their side, but if they fail to connect with the viewing public the ramifications could be catastrophic for certain media businesses.