When I was a kid I remember on Sunday nights my family would sit down after dinner, watch whatever Disney movie was playing on television that night and help my mom fold the laundry. Although, I was only good for matching the socks together back then. On Friday nights we would order pizza and rent movies from a Video Gallery in town. As time went on, we had more and more choices of what to watch. More and more channels became available in various cable packages and we started collecting DVDs. Then there were On-Demand channels with catalogues of free or low-cost rentals. Deciding on something to watch grew much more difficult as time went on. It became less spontaneous and more of a choice.
Let’s rewind to the beginning of at-home television viewing and set up our sustaining innovation first: the television. If you were lucky to live in a home with a television, people and maybe neighbors would gather around it for particular programs and share in that experience. That is, when there were programs to watch. Eventually, it became a regular household object and programming grew. It started with broadcast channels and antennas. There was only so much space available in the airwaves and the content therefore could be regulated quite a bit. Technology developed and cables were introduced to help viewers receive the content better, thus sustaining this technological innovation. Pay-TV and cable programming kept sustaining the television’s development.
The disruptive innovation began much like a drop of water in a pond. It started so small but it rippled right across the industry. Networks began posting their shows on their websites and then there were other sites that would post the shows as well. The latter usually being a little dicey in ethics but people didn’t care. They were just excited they could watch their show before one of their co-workers ruined it for them. This brought television viewing to your computer. With the concurrent development in technology in digital devices and the internet, television wasn’t only for TVs anymore. You could watch on any device with an internet connection.
The sustaining innovation was kind of able to continue growth with the aforementioned On-demand channels. The cable providers could get you to subscribe to certain networks which then granted you access to the catalogue of their shows but at your viewing leisure. As the companies and their technology became more sophisticated they were able to offer recording services with your cable box, like DVR or the service TiVo, with the ability to pause, rewind and fast-forward your live-programming. People could also pay into extra services that fit their television viewing tastes.
The disruptive innovation answers with streaming services that had cross-network catalogues as well as movies. The big one that comes to mind, was Netflix. This one in particular is a stand-out because while there are others like it, you do not need to watch commercials. I also enjoy Hulu especially in the rare case when I have caught up to the show in real time. After successfully binge watching the six seasons that are available on Netflix, and you’re dying to know what happens next, if you are lucky, it is on Hulu. Even though there are still a few commercials, you don’t have to be in front of the TV at the specific time on the specific day that your favorite show airs on.
I know for a family like mine, it no longer made sense to pay for these crazy large cable packages. Eventually we cancelled it altogether. With the exception of sports, we had everything we needed between Netflix and Hulu.
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