To say the internet has changed a lot of things would be the understatement of the century: the invention of the internet has made an enormous impact on how people see and interact with the world. It has allowed for huge leaps in technology in a short block of time, helping people to invent new technologies as well as improve old ones. One of the older technologies that the internet has helped improve is television. TVs with internet access are becoming the norm giving people the ability to view websites and download apps for use on the big screen. Online streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu are making cable television less relevant allowing viewers more convenient access to their favorite programs. While there is still need for televisions …show more content…
Whether this is subject to change soon is up in the air, but over time more and more shows are added to streaming sites so it is only a matter of time until all shows can be watched online too.
It might not look like it on the surface, but television is undergoing changes on almost every level thanks to the introduction of the internet. When first introduced, it took a while to catch on and become the dominant source of entertainment, but soon enough “Americans had gone TV mad” (Hilmes 2014). Television’s popularity skyrocketed within the first decade, TV ownership went from “64% in 1955” to “93% in 1965” and the number of viewing hours rose to “5.5 per day” in the average household (Hilmes 2014). Audiences for TVs were relatively easy to measure in the earlier stages of the medium. Hilmes notes that the mid 1950s to 1960s was a period “during which social discourse played an important, and very public , role in determining television industry structure, programming, and ideas about the audience” (Hilmes 2014). She adds, however, that “as far as the industry was concerned” their main audience consisted of white middle