In the late ’60s and early ’70s, a wave of fast-paced TV shows with commercial-like segments — Sesame Street, Electric Company, Zoom — changed children’s expectations of television. Jason Fry is watching the same kind of sea change now as his three-year-old boomerangs between the “stupid TV” and the “smart TV” with TiVo. The Fry family acquired a TiVo the week Joshua was born “so he has never known a world without it. … The issue isn’t whether Joshua watches more TV or less — TiVo is how he watches TV, period.”
Fry muses about how this will change the way his son watches TV in the future, how it’s changing his own attitude towards using the TV for some internet activities — and he wonders about TiVo’s future as a company. “Will the DVR Joshua watch be a TiVo? Or will the company be remembered as a pioneer whose story ended with arrows in the back? (Perhaps “TiVo” will live on as a generic term — the ultimate Pyrrhic corporate victory.) Joshua won’t care — but today’s TiVo shareholders certainly do.” One small victory for TiVo — no more “stupid” TVs in the Fry household.
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