The Future of Television

Last week I stumbled upon a pretty explicit video of celebrities being interviewed, cursing, fast cuts and the appearance of professional editing within a YouTube video. What made this stand out from the rest of the videos was the high quality of production. It is pretty much the same as mainstream celebrity television shows except that it is uncensored.

There is non-stop talk of sex, a lot of cursing and just good ‘ol raunchy discussion reminiscent of Howard Stern’s infamously raunchy radio show. It was so dirty that I had to watch! It made me think of the early cable days where anything went and it also makes me think that this is what YouTube is rapidly becoming. Anybody has a shot at production and there are no filters aside from blocking videos from nudity.

I’ve embedded one of the videos below (which you should probably avoid watching while at work or in the presence of children) which has had over two million views. This ranks it close to the top 10 cable shows (Hannah Montana is the 10th most popular with 3.4 million viewers) according to Nielsen. Now you know where all the television viewers are going. Popular shows like the one below will further the shift to online video.

I was shocked at the number of viewers visiting the NGTV.com (sample shown below). It emphasizes how important web video is becoming. Be warned though about the video below, there is non-stop cursing, explicit conversations and just inappropriate dialogue in general. If you don’t like trashy television, I suggest that you don’t watch this one. Do you know of any other shows that have this level of production and viewership on the web?