television

An interesting thought struck me yesterday. Everyone constantly says how dead the print media are, but nobody considers the death of television. But, when I look at most of the people around me (ok, all college students, but still), all signs point to newspapers surviving - albeit in online form - and television, in the traditional, boob-tube sense, rapidly losing popularity.
Nobody will read newspapers in ten years, the editors and old-schoolers worry. Kids these days get everything off the internet. Now, if somebody ever gave me a good argument about why "kids these days" ARE so different from kids in any other day, I'd have to congratulate them. Honestly, we're doing all the standard stuff - challenging the system, pissing off our parents, trying desperately to distinguish ourselves. I, for one, have given up on this effort, but I don't doubt that other of my generation will continue to try until they hit that magical point (probably when they have kids) when they decide they like the world the way it is and complain about anyone who tries to change it.
But anyway, a newspaper on the internet is still a newspaper. But television, when converted to online form, is something a bit different. It's not an Orwellian telescreen. It's user-controlled and relatively light on advertising. Best of all, it's no longer a necessity. I don't have a single friend who, when I come over, makes me compete with a blaring TV for attention. In my neighborhood, its Snoop Dogg on the stereo and band practice that keep me up, not late-night infomercials. Sure, the older generation may still spend a good portion of their time mesmerized by live television. But if someone I'm talking to brings up a show and I ask them when it's on, they'll have no idea because it's on all the time - on the net, free and often downloadable.
The TV network owners are probably in bigger trouble than the newspaper guys, because it seems that a lot of TV's profit comes from people watching things they don't necessarily mean to watch because they have the tube on in the background. Internet TV will never be compatible with this method of media consumption. As a result, I believe it could become more content-driven, not advertising-driven. Sure, formats can change, and the transition away from telescreens will probably be seamless. But if there's room to worry about the death of media, it's in TV, not newspapers and magazines.