In its early years, television relied on sports to grow. TV manufacturers broadcast sports programs to boost viewer ship so that they could sell more sets. Things have changed and today, we make additional payment over subscription fees in order to watch sports on TV. We should not. Satellite and cable companies have the habit of imposing pay-per-view on popular sports events, be it boxing, football, tennis or other sports. Computer makers should pull the same trick like TV before and telecast those sports programs free so there's win-win once again. We can then write off those cable and satellite TV providers.



Actually, something to that effect has already long been done. It's Free To Air Internet TV, where satellite TV is streamed directly to our computers over the internet. FTA internet TV is not brought forth by the computer manufacturers though and operates on the aged-old basis of advertisement and sponsorship support and subsidy. Most of these broadcasters, if not all, have their own targeted agenda. Whatever that may be, we get our sports free in return for watching their bundle, similarly an aged-old and fair deal.

There's another type of internet TV providers. They charge a fee for their service although the majority of what they stream is FTA sourced. Their value-add is in assembling ready-made internet TV which would otherwise be time-consuming and onerous for the individual viewers to go it themselves. Thousands of channels from all over the world comprising across the board genres and not just sports are standard features. While a fee is involved, it's one-time for a lifetime.

Another thing about sports on computer is its mobility. With WiFi internet zones getting commonplace nowadays, you can watch that big game live in trains, coffee houses, restaurants or wherever while on travel, at work or whatever you're engaged in.

Although the world is flat now as coined by author-journalist Thomas Friedman, time zones will never be. Game time at playing venue may be office, school or bedtime for the viewer so the computer, especially if it's a laptop, will go more handily to where the conventional TV set would find too bothersome or conspicuous to.