There is a revolution going on in the media world. TVs are battling computers. TVs have worked their way into becoming an essential commodity in every home. However, this commodity is disappearing from the lives of college students. Most students don’t have televisions in their dorm rooms anymore. If you add on the limited channels and busy schedules, a majority of students don’t have time to sit down and watch an entire episode at its scheduled time anymore. A lucky few make time to catch their favorite shows. It becomes an obsessive ritual never to be broken. Yet, many students can’t follow their shows anymore with all their classes, organizations and sports. The only option they have left is to find another way to fit it into their schedules.
The Internet is filled with sites giving students the opportunity to watch TV shows on their own time. Sites like Netflix and Hulu offer a limited selection of TV shows for free. Also, there are sites out there like Project Free Tv and LetMeWatchThis that have multiple seasons of shows, sometimes even including current seasons. Episodes of shows can be found in high quality and with no commercial interruptions.
One student prefers watching shows online rather than on TV because, “If I want to watch a show not on the air anymore I can watch it online.” Watching shows online is just quicker, easier and more considerate of time.
If it is easier for students to watch shows online then I say go for it. Why not take the easy way out and just stick to the computers? Even if some online sites are illegal, students will watch their favorite shows there anyway. These websites just make them easy to access in one central location. If it is such a huge problem and so illegal then why do these sites exist in the first place? It shouldn’t be too hard to take down, so if the sites are available, students are most likely to continue using the resources that are available to them.
TV shows on actual televisions will probably become extinct in the near future. With the power of computers looming over everyone it is so easy to just watch a show online rather than wait and plan to be in front of a television right when your favorite show starts. Watching shows on a wide variety of sites are going to change the media world forever.
Alyssa Hingre can be reached at alyssa.hingre@spartans.ut.edu.
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