Akkam’s Razor

The world of entertainment will most likely look quite different in only a few years time.  The great industry push towards High-Definition doesn’t seem to be moving as quickly as possible (despite LARGE drops in the price of TVs and receivers).  If anything, video is moving the opposite way, with consuemrs clammoring for the ability to do whatever they want with their media and also having the ability to view it anywhere, including from your TV/PC, game device, and cell phone.  Factor in the new competition that the cable and satellite networks will soon feel from TV-over-Power Lines and internet, plus the increasing variety and quality of user-created content, and you have a foreign landscape that will be unrecognizable by todays standards.

So what could the TV world look like?  Check this article in Digital Journalist by Terry Heaton: 

The business opportunities for unbundled media are truly remarkable, but in order for local media companies to take advantage of them, they must begin viewing themselves as more than one-dimensional deliverers of bundled media. For broadcasters, that means finding the courage to say to ourselves that our transmitter isn’t our top business anymore. It’s but one of many, and our internal systems and even our organizational charts should reflect that. Only then will we be able to truly reinvent ourselves for the future.

This is a tough sell for the industry, because our bread and butter, bundled models are still delivering significant revenues and will continue to do so for years to come. Those revenues, however, won’t (can’t) be enough to sustain real business growth, and so the only choice seems to be to cut costs. We keep missing the point that revenue isn’t the problem; audience is the problem, and they’re moving to the unbundled world.

 There is something in their - part of the fundamental shift - the consumer has already realized the change and created a market, which is waiting for someone to fill it.  Consumers, in the meantime, are making due.  Now, keep in mind, the majority of those users are alpha geeks, people like me, but at the same time these are the people who write the strong opinions and are the trend setters in their social circles.  A switch such as this will require broadcasters to finally admit that the audience may be smarter than them.