We Are a Nation of Time-Shifters [TimeShifting]

You have a difficult time remembering an age if you didn’t DVR shows to look at later. But that’s never been true for nearly all of Americans-in the past. The time-shifters are taking on. And it’s wonderful.

The news comes from a Comcast survey of 1,000 television viewers-inside and outside of their network-wherein an entire 62% of respondents said they’d watched a TV show at a time aside from it was originally broadcast (called time-shifting). That incorporates both DVR and on-demand viewings, and could foreshadow the end of prime time as we understand it.

Here’s the final idea: the more people access their favorite shows at a time apart from its original airing, the less reason there is to have an ” original” air time at all. The schedule could instead become fully on-demand, with ads targeted based on when and even where you’re watching a given show. It’ll be even more feasible if and when the web-enabled TV boom happens.

So why wouldn’t it happen? For some thing, it’s hard to search out an industry more entrenched in a business model than than television broadcasting. For one more, it discounts the still powerful notion of appointment television; shows like Mad Men or, when it was on, Lost, don’t necessarily demand live viewing, but they’re events that folks schedule their nights around.

What’s more likely is that your on-demand options will continue to expand to other platforms. We’ve seen two important instances of that already this week, with HBO Go and live Verizon FiOS TV both coming to the iPad.

So will all this time-shifting crumble the very foundation of broadcast television? Not really. At the least not for decades. Nevertheless it’ll definitely continue to rattle it. [Fast Company]

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