How Has Personal Media Changed

Starting in 1927, when the first television was created by Philo Taylor Farnsworth, nobody thought the world would ever look back, as television was the future, however that all changed when personal media came about. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that television caught on with the majority of society, as television prices were very high until the 50s. When television was just beginning there were only a couple main broadcasting channels, including: ABC, CBS, and NBC, however now there are thousands of television channels, yet millions of channels on personal media sites such as YouTube. As technology continues to evolve and new discoveries are made, personal media has begun to and will continue to grow to a level of variety and accessibility

Netflix is an example of an on-demand subscription service that allows users to not only watch movies, but also pick a specific episode of the user’s favorite show. Business Insider reports that: “In 2010, Netflix had 530 TV shows and 6,755 movies, according to Flixable. Today, the number of TV shows has nearly tripled, to 1,569, and the number of movies offered has decreased to 4,010.” (Clark 2018). In merely the past eight years, the number of shows that were requested to be put on Netflix skyrocketed, as people wanted to be in control of what they were watching, which is why YouTube and Netflix both skyrocketed when released to the public. Netflix has stated in the past that if a viewer is truly interested in seeing a movie they will likely see it in theaters, however when it comes to viewing a television show, they may want to re-watch the whole series again or just want to check out an old series that they have never watched before. Netflix also released original movies and shows, as does YouTube, which draws larger audiences to these platforms, as these specific shows are not able to be viewed on television. While most television providers do have some sort of on-demand feature, nearly all of them lack the number of titles that are offered on subscription services that cost much less than a television network subscription. Netflix costs as little as $7.99 per month for the basic subscription, and up to $13.99 per month for the premium subscription (Netflix 2018) which allows for up to four screens to watch a program at the same time. Although television does have a mass number of channels, a subscription to a personal media service such as Netflix will provide the viewer with countless on-demand titles for whichever genre they are in the mood for, whether it be a movie or to binge watch a