• by Wayne Friedman , November 18, 2011

Right now, more than 100,000 individual TV episodes and movie titles are available online. But a continuing problem remains: How to find material?

There are 19,000 movie titles and 82,000 TV episodes available digitally, according to Tribune Media Services, a company that provides on-air entertainment program guides as well as online entertainment navigation.

Tribune says 15.5% of those 100,000 titles are drama-related TV or films; 11.3% are childrens' content; 11.2% are TV sitcoms; 11.0% are reality shows; 7.3% is comedy; 7.1% are crime drama; 4.9% are documentary; and 3.5% are science fiction.

Video on demand is also included as a factor -- and will be a big part of TV viewers' ability to access movies and TV shows in the future. Now, some 50 million TV homes have VOD access, rising to 70.3 million homes in 2016. Those VOD TV homes can access 315 individual titles at any given time.

Now there are 72.2 million U.S. TV viewers who watch a full-length TV episode online once a week, according to eMarketer. Nielsen says this number is somewhat lower: 50 million.

Tribune claims the problem for electronic guides in the future are the varying video formats that sites use -- a number of video site "paywalls" that can quickly change from a "free" model. All this can confuse consumers, as well as expiring links for specific TV episodes or movies.

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