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This February 5th I'll definitely be able to watch the Super Bowl. Legally.
Streaming NFL playoff football has been available on justin.tv - but if you have every tried to go that route you know how iffy and unsatisfying that experience can be. Not to mention the whole question of is watching a football game on Justin.TV even legal? I read the TOS, and I have no idea. (Maybe you can help?)
I'm amazed it has taken the NFL (and in this case NBC) as long as it has to finally decide to stream the Super Bowl. I'm baffled why all advertising supported content is not streamed. If you stream ad supported content that I want to watch, I will give you personal information about myself in exchange. You can advertise to me with relevant ads. There is very little chance that I will pay an extra fee to stream what is available free on TV, so you are not losing an opportunity to sell me something. A good deal all around.
How does streaming and the Super Bowl relate to higher ed? Only that I am one of many people I know who work in and around higher ed who has cut the cable / satellite / and (even) over-the-air cord.
Maybe higher ed people are weird, or maybe my friends in higher ed are weirder, but I doubt that we are alone. When you work in higher ed, as in almost every other information industry, you become dependent on a really good web connection. At home I'd rather invest my dollars in a faster internet pipe than in a monthly TV bill.
Actually, I think the reason that many higher ed people are cutting the TV cord is more fundamental, and perhaps pertains to other information people. We are deluged with data, and we have no time. TV is not time efficient. We want the content of TV plus all the other content we want (from movies, books, news, opinion, etc. etc.) when we want it, on the platform that we want to use. We want to pick the time and the screen.
We have also gotten more savvy about understanding our brains, and we realize that our brains love nothing better than to vegitate on the couch after a long day and channel surf. We have put ourselves on a TV diet because TV is not productive.
Besides, we really don't need TV. We have fast web connections and lots of content options - from Netflix to Hulu to YouTube to Amazon Prime. Live TV, like sports, is really the only thing missing - and therefore we are getting out of the live sports TV habit.
I'm sure that we are way behind our students. Would you bother with a cable or satellite subscription if you were a college student today? A smart sports league would stream everything live for free, and build tomorrow's audience of non-TV (but big bandwidth) subscribers.
Have you cut the cord?
