Niche Television Channels

While reading Nicholas Negroponte’s “Being Digital,” I thought Chapter 13; “The Post-Information Age” was the most interesting section because it discussed a lot of things that our generation has experienced. He talks about narrowcasting which caters to small demographic groups, geography and its lack or absence of limitations, asynchronous communication, and On Demand. At first, I thought I would want to write about On Demand because I use it all the time and know a lot about it, but I decided to focus on narrowcasting because I think Negroponte could have gone more in depth on this topic.

Negroponte defines narrowcasting accurately and talks about how information becomes extremely personalized, but I don’t think he gives enough examples. He mentions niche magazines as one example of narrowcasting, and the ones that immediately pop into my head are Wired, Vanity Fair, Men’s Health and Women’s Health, and National Geographic Traveler. However, I think people of our generation would be more familiar with niche television stations like MTV, VH1, BET, Sci-Fi Channel, Animal Planet, History Channel, Discovery, TruTv, Cartoon Network, NBA TV, etc. These channels have easier access to people like us because all we have to do is sit down in our family rooms, turn on the television, go to the guide, and find a “niche channel” that we are interested in and begin watching a specific program of our choice. Magazines are still popular today, but they are not available with the click of a button and many people don’t like reading which makes watching television so much more enjoyable. Personally, one of my favorite channels is NBA TV because it focuses on NBA games, highlights, news, and interviews which are very appealing to me. ESPN, on the other hand, incorporates sports such as tennis, hockey, women’s basketball, and the X-Games that I do not have much interest in. In the end, Negroponte should have discussed niche television channels because everyone watches them and they are much more popular than niche magazines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/5108980.stm