TVSquad

Live TV has this way of being, well live. And that means hard to schedule. As any PVR owner who's tried to record The Simpsons after a football game can tell you, that sometimes means your shows will be cut off.

So on the one hand, it shouldn't be that surprising that this week's American Idol finale ran about 9 minutes long. On the other hand, it's not like the producers aren't used to putting together a live program every week. Anyway, thousands of viewers missed the big finish where Jordin Sparks was crowned miss... err.. the next idol.

I'll be the first to admit that devices such as Tivo and DVRs are really nice, especially when you find yourself writing about television on a daily basis. However, it also seems like the viewing experience, as it becomes more convenient, has also become unnecessarily complicated. For example, a new device known as Slingbox allows folks to port live television to any other device via a broadband connection. It seems straightforward enough, but some experts fear that there may be some legal issues about when and where content is made available: "Place-shifting is problematic to many copyright holders because it sidesteps what is known in legalese as proximity control, which restricts the distribution of content to specific regions and times."

I like television, but I don't want to think about it THAT much.