.TV – Don’t Call It A Comeback, It’s Been Here For Years

Television

I don’t think I’ve done a single post on my blog yet this year about .TV, and honestly, that’s a shame because they have been rocking it, big time. I have been a believer in .TV for years now but the initial premium pricing turned off many investors and end-users, and Internet TV hadn’t really taken off yet.

Now 100% of what we watch at home is through either Roku or Boxee and we haven’t paid a dime to the cable company for over two years now. No commercials, lots of content, and lots of .TV names showing up in the mix.

Roku has something called the “Channel Store” where you can access all of the streaming channels. Of course Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon’s are the ones we use most-frequently, but there are some other great channels that have a good following, and they’re building their brands on .TV.

Channels like Blip.tv, iFood.tv, Recipe.tv and many more are growing and attracting new visitors every day as more and more people ditch the cable companies and go digital.

When we first made the move, many of my friends said, “Well what about sports!?” I am not a huge sports fan but do follow Basketball, I subscribe to NBA League Pass which gives me every game on the planet. If you’re a football fan you’re out of luck but I’ve never been an avid follower of the sport so this isn’t a big deal for me.

As for television shows Hulu gives you just about every show you could want (we don’t watch a ton of TV so it really is more than we would need) and between Netflix and Amazon you can get New Releases and tons of great free movies and TV shows. There are lots of great news channels like WSJ Live and NBCNews.

The real different is life without commercials (except in the case of Hulu) and everything on demand. Honestly the concept of a DVR sounds incredibly old school to me. Why would I want to select what I want to record, make sure I have enough space, etc. when I could just have everything I would ever want to watch. Oh and did I mention my bill went from over $200/month for Cable TV (we have setups in three different rooms) down to $18/month.

My point is, streaming is in, and growing fast, it’s cheaper and the content is better and we probably see less than 10 minutes of commercials a week which is pure heaven. New channels are appearing every week and .TV seems to be a very common choice. Couple this with the fact that Mark Cuban and Ryan Seacrest are launching a new network and building their brand on .TV and you can see while I’m bullish about the space.

So hats off to .TV, there is clearly a growing trend here and I think the one-word .TV space has a ton of potential. Trend domain plays are a risk, but if the trend is growing, there can be some big rewards. While my focus is still .COM I have been buying some one-word .TVs and I don’t think I’ve given .TV it’s moment in the sun which it most certainly deserves after a great 2012.

What do you think? Is .TV going to grow with video streaming or is this another .MOBI in the making? Comment and let your voice be heard!

(Photo Credit | Chart Credit)

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton