While you're right in the general sense that children get surprised when they discover a world that isn't like their home, I firmly believe you're wrong in the

While you're right in the general sense that children get surprised when they discover a world that isn't like their home, I firmly believe you're wrong in the applicability of that to TV. Thanks to BBC iPlayer, we've had near-universal internet video on demand in the UK for some years now - and the other broadcasters had to copy to catch up. I largely stopped bothering with TV schedules; I just watch the programs at my convenience, from a menu of content - it's a far superior user experience in almost every way. In browsing UK profiles on dating sites, I've noted huge numbers of people saying they don't have TVs and just use iPlayer. When I was young I used to react with incredulity to the idea that homes didn't have TVs and cars in the past. I remember the incredulity to which some children reacted when I took a photo on my film SLR and they couldn't see it on the back. Landline phones are already dying - children will react with horror that we used to ring a building and hope a person was in it. And, within the next ten years, scheduled network broadcast TV will, to all intents and purposes, die. Rolling news and live sports have a reason to be live and I suspect will stay. Otherwise, I expect in 20 years time to be getting baffled looks from children to the idea that we used to have to wait to all watch a program at the exact same time and if we couldn't see it then we didn't see it. They'll all be have grown up with streaming VoD to tablets and TVs and anything else will feel as antiquated as a horse and cart.