VERONICA BANEZ WRITES – Technology is more advanced today than it has ever been. One of the most important advancements has been the concept of streaming – not only for entertainment purposes, but for current events as well.
In recent years, there has been a huge outbreak of media streaming services. There has been an increasing number of ways to view favorite shows, movies, and news channels. However, as quoted in Michelle Duff’s article about New Zealand’s media, “Some of Netflix’s content is not as madly viable in New Zealand […] this service is going to have to fight for its market.” Although streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu are becoming a popular means of entertainment, these services are barely making their name known in countries like New Zealand.
New Zealand currently has four streaming services competing to win over the majority of the subscriber population. In 2010, a study was conducted in order to calculate the percentage of time that people in New Zealand spent with all forms of media. It turned out that at least 39% of people spent, on average, eight hours a day watching television while 22% spent that same amount of time on the Internet. These numbers have not only grown throughout the years, but have also changed in such a way that reveals that the Internet is slowly becoming the dominant form of modern technology.
Duff’s article also argued that people are becoming more impatient when it comes to shows in terms of not wanting to wait until the original airing date on TV. In New Zealand specifically, more people are turning to the Internet as a source of watching shows at an earlier time. Although media streaming services will not take a toll on the country immediately, it will become evident in the long run that these portable and “play as you go” services will eliminate the country’s already small population of television viewers.