On a recent trip to New York City, my family and I visited the amazing Museum of
Television & Radio. The heart of the museum is its Library, a collection of 120,000
television and radio programs. The library is amazing. First, you search the
museum’s electronic card catalog of television programs. It is vast, including
important news broadcasts, sitcoms, commercials, programs that never aired, and
more. When you find the program that you want to see, you can “check it out” by
clicking a button.
In a few minutes, you are called down to the screening room and directed to one of
the viewing stations where you can watch the program that you selected. You can
even pause, rewind, and fast-forward through it. (I watched the pilot of a short-
lived Party Of Five spin-off, my wife watched an unaired episode of Undeclared, and
my daughter watched a black-and-white Lucille Ball special.)
I am confident that in just a few years, you won’t need to visit the Museum of
Television & Radio to have access to such a vast array of history and popular culture
in video form: it will all be available online.
TV shows are already available online today. Right this minute you can to go the
iTunes Music Store (which is kind of a misnomer now,homeland project free tv because it offers television
shows, music videos, and even a handful of movies) and download episodes of
Spongebob Squarepants, Law & Order, Desperate Housewives, and more than 50
other shows. The selection isn’t limited to new shows: you can also download
episodes of Adam 12, Schoolhouse Rock, Knight Rider, and other classics. (Some
might argue that Knight Rider doesn’t qualify as a classic, but you get the point.)
50-plus shows at iTunes, plus another small selection at Google Video, is of course
only a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of programs on hand at the
MT&R in Manhattan. But this is only the start: computers are now fast enough, and
broadband ubiquitous enough, that video will soon revolutionize the Internet. When
that happens, you’ll be able to punch up any episode of almost any show.
You can enjoy the cusp of that revolution today by legally downloading dozens of
shows — as well as thousands of video-podcasts, “vlogs” (video blogs), indie films,
and other videos. Although your favorite show from today or the past might not be
available for download yet, you’ll certainly be able to find something good to watch
online.