Event TV – “Wait, Rewind that…” (Part Two)

Onwards with our epic tale…

Yes sir, the very process of watching the TV was an event in itself and I’ve never been so popular, however, every story needs a villain.

Despite the immense popularity of the television, humanity wasn’t always content with regular scheduled broadcasting, and I soon found myself faced with a new foe, he came to be known as the ‘videocassette recorder’ or VCR.

This box, designed to both record and play back live broadcasted Television at any time while at home, did more damage to Event TV than any other I can think of to date!

This was the bridge, this, and it’s sub-par competitor Betamax, sparked an idea, that would one day strike terror into the heart of every television broadcaster and Ad agency. This little black box had taken the ‘event’ out of television and introduced a time-shifting paradigm that still gives me cold static to this day.

Soon, households with a VCR in the 1980’s recorded around five hours of television per week. The TV ad people were going nuts… drastic measures were being taken and ads were becoming simpler and bigger as to be recognised while being fast-forwarded!

However, fortunately for us we had a saving grace. The growing popularity of commercial videocassettes meant, over time, people began to buy or rent their videos and time-shift recording soon became secondary

Event-based viewing slowly started to creep back in.

However, this was only the bridge, leading into much darker times. What may have seemed like a saving grace now, would prove to be more damaging then any TV could ever imagine… For now, however, we continue on with our story.

25 years after VCRs were introduced, only one in five households recorded anything at all with their old VCR.

TV had managed to defeat the evil time-shifting device… but it was too little to late, the seed had been planted and the damage had been done…

See you next week…