Welcome to the New Year

Deborah McAdams is the Executive Editor of TV Technology.

Please take your seat and fasten your seatbelt. We are expecting some turbulence on the flight through the year 2011. We’d like to direct your attention to the television monitors.

Note that television monitors not connected to the Internet will become quaint relics of a bygone era. Those connected through a peripheral device will become objects of mild curiosity, like telescoping cellphone antennas.

Television monitors connected to cable or satellite service will become démodé as people discover that aerial reception plus shows delivered online equals hybrid à la carte.

Please make sure your seat backs and folding trays are in their full upright position as Internet pirates proliferate. Observe them claiming the constitutional right to resell network programming without paying license fees for it. Watch the resulting bonanza for the Lawyers Benevolent Society and Limousine Service. See the quality of programming deteriorate even further into a mélange of webcam voyeurism and larvae-eating quasi savages bedecked in strategically disheveled Patagonia Outdoor Clothing. Don’t miss the grocery store gossip rags celebritizing a loosely knit community of cultish figures consisting of the last known Americans who have not been on TV. They will run, but they cannot hide.

At this time, we request that all cell phones, pagers, radios and remote-controlled model helicopters be turned on simultaneously in order to verify predictions of astronomically growing data-rate consumption. Nonuse of these items may interfere with the federal government’s justification for subsidizing the wireless industry, and may contribute to the preservation of free, over-the-air television.

And finally, in the event of another economic descent, we direct your attention to 3DTV, a needless televisual augmentation intended to divert you from the absence of emergency exits on the flight through 2011. Neither is there supplemental oxygen nor anything attached to your seats that will float. Enjoy your flight.