News, insights and oddities

What do you say we plop aTV set on the desk of every employee in your organization.

Sounds nuts, you say? ... Already done, isn't it?

Aren't PCs with a broadband connection becoming more indistinguishable from aTV with each passing day? Much of college basketball's March Madness tournament was available - live - thanks to the good folks at CBS, who were so cognizant of what that would mean for network managers that they offered advice for blocking the broadcasts. ABC just made a splash by announcing it will offer free online access to prime-time programs such as "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" the day after they air.... Can the soaps be far behind?

Here's a pitch I saw from one Web site: "Take A QuickTV Break! Are you feeling that the day is getting too long and you're falling asleep at your desk? Sneak in a quick energizer. Let us show you how to use your PC to catch a comedy just to brighten your day, update yourself with a quick news clip, or watch your favorite artist's music video!"

Knowing those exclamation points would register as darts for network professionals, I turned last week to the members of my blog's e-mail list - the Buzzblog Brigade for their views on this PC-to-TV evolution. What follows is some of their venting:

"We're going to see a lot more places clamping down. For starters, bandwidth has limits, and if a large portion of a workplace's population is watching 'Lost,' that isn't going to be good for network performance," writes John Gog, network system administrator for the city of Birmingham, Ala. "But my bigger issue is the waste of time. I get very tired of hearing how people are working soooo many hours, when those same people (in many cases) are spending hours each week doing personal surfing. Having survived the NCAA tournament, which had users watching games and spending time fiddling with their brackets, the thought of them now watching primetime programming during work hours is sickening."

And let's not forget the audiophiles.