100 Channels and there is nothing on

I have been wondering for a while about my lack of desire on some days to 'surf' the web in that 1999 style of old. Googling random topics to see where I go. Spending hours looking at random sites in fascination.

All that has gone, and I think I have worked out why.

You remember having 4/5 tv channels, you always found something to watch. Then multi channel tv came along, and it was a realm of choice, every possible subject and whim catered for through the wonders of satellite technology.

Then we got settled, then we chose favourites, then we flicked... we flicked some more... then we never stopped flicking. Our standards became so high that suddenly that half interesting documentary or obscure Indian film became wastage instead of the only thing on. We said 'there's nothing on!' even though there clearly was lots of things on.

Well that's what is happening to the net. Facebook, twitter, blip, blogger, your news site... thats it. You are done. No time left to random surf, and even then you do it on wikipedia.

iGoogle makes it worse, you don't even need to go looking for stuff. It's all right there.

Web 2.0 has become multi channel tv. Suffering from our RSS favourite comfort zones.

Negotiation by Ad

Wow. I cannot believe that noone on the blogs I read has mentioned the all out war of words that is going on between Sky and Virgin Media.

The story is that they are negotiating to keep Sky channels on Virgin services, and Sky (alledgedly) would only accept extortionate prices and have no withdrawn their channels. Sky however, say that they have offered numerous alternatives and Virgin have refused.

The amazing bit is that this war is being carried out everywhere in print ads in newspapers. This is AFTER sky put ads on Virgin's feed of their channels asking people to call Virgin and tell them how much they want the channels!I have never seen so much advertising between two companies in such a short space of time.

They are talking straight at the public, with Virgin appearing to come off slightly more positive.

I will try and photo some of the ads tonight, but just get a paper from today or (probably) tomorrow and read a battle going on before our very eyes.