Are we in a post-television era now?

As James Poniewozik wrote for TIME magazine in 2014, the ways people engage with video media are changing rapidly. Since television sets became popular household appliances throughout the Western world in the 1950's, the pattern of engaging with television programming has remained fairly consistent-- until the last few years. For the past half a century, people watched television by turning on their set when their desired program was scheduled to air. This changed a little bit with the introduction of the VCR and services like Tivo, which allow people to record a program and watch it later. On-demand video services also allowed people to watch their programs on their own time, but these three things weren't really enough to inspire people to ditch their cable service altogether.

Throughout the past several years, companies like Netflix have dramatically altered the way we engage with television and film. Subscription services allow viewers access to a wider variety of programming than is currently broadcast, with the benefit of being able to watch these media whenever is convenient for us. I can think of two major changes in our behavior with regards to television viewing. In the past our watching a television program was dependent upon a broadcast schedule, but subscription services now allow us to watch on our own schedule. Additionally, the broadcast-dependent behavior of watching television typically meant that people would only watch one episode of a program in a thirty minute or one hour sitting. Subscription services may have many more episodes available, allowing for something called "binge watching."

Of course, many people use their subscription services to stream programs and films through their television set. Such services may also be used on computers, tablet devices, and even smart phones. I feel that rather than saying we are in a "post-television" era, it might be better to say we are in a "post-broadcast" era. Watching television is no longer dependent upon the broadcast schedule, but many people are still reliant upon a television set to watch video media.