Watching your favourite tv programs online has become a trend in our tech savvy generation. Despite the smaller screen and often lower quality image, there are significant benefits. One being that you no longer need to arrange your schedule to make time for your favourite program; you can watch online whenever you have the time. This is extremely valuable if you don’t already have a pvr.
The second major benefit to streaming online is that you save a significant amount of time as you are not forced to sit through tiresome advertisements. Granted, there are some sites that slip in commercials like ctv or youtube but most don’t (usually the ones that are illegal).
Commercials have proven to be the number one form of advertisement as they result in the greatest response from the public. However, the long term effects of this new trend may be that the value of commercial advertisements will decrease. Time slots for ads may go down, more sites may cave into including ads and reap the cash benefits, or these sites will be shut down one at a time by government regulation (as they have already started by shutting down the popular site, tvshack).
This situation is similar to that of the music industry. Pirating music is illegal and the government does its best to shut down illegal sites (eg. Limewire), but there is no end. It takes too long for officials to go through formalities while setting up a site to share music takes less than an hour. The artists suffered a great loss in profits and now must find other ways to compensate.
Will companies suffer as great a loss with fewer viewers to see their ads? Only time will tell.