Television is dead. Long live television!

Mark Twain once said, reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Can the same be said about television? In the age of personal video recorders (PVRs, e.g. TiVo) and BitTorrent movie downloads, the stereotypical model of a television set broadcasting content at a relatively passive audience looks more dead than alive. And yet, television viewing remains strong: Nielsen reports that, in 2007, North American households spent a record number of hours (8 hours and 14 minutes per day, to be precise ) with a set tuned in to their favorite channels. What, then, can the future of television possibly be?

Citation

Ducheneaut, N. Television is dead. Long live television!. Afterword in Social Interactive Television: Immersive Shared Experiences and Perspectives, edited by P. Cesar, D. Geerts, and K. Chorianopoulos. Hershey, PA: IGI Global; 2009; 303-304.