TV Has Gone Crazy...It's Going to be a Few Ugly Years

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/03/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-tv/' target='_blank'>http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01...ing-on-with-tv/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"After more than a decade of false starts, web TV is here -- sort of. I'm talking about more than just streaming a sitcom on my laptop. We know the web has the power to make any media distribution system cheaper and more efficient. This is different. Thanks to streaming video services like Hulu and Netflix (NFLX) and new portable devices such as the iPad, we've begun to expect that TV should be more like the web itself: social, mobile, searchable, and instantly available."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1294251260.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>This article definitely strikes a chord with me - and nicely&nbsp;summarizes&nbsp;the incredibly complex TV landscape, pointing out the reasons why we're unlikely to get what we really want any time soon: the ability to watch any TV show or movie on any device we have, anywhere we are. This is an ugly time for the TV/movie industry as they figure out how to offer consumers what we want, while still trying to preserve their fat profits...and you can guess why we haven't seen much in the way of good solutions so far.</p>

[whydidnt]

An interesting and non-surprising read. It seems to me the TV studios are making the same mistakes the record studios did, though. Instead of embracing a new distribution method and figuring out how to make it work they have done everything possible to make it easy for new players to enter and take the market from them. If only these corporations weren't tirelessly focused on this quarter's bottom line, they'd see through the forest and realize that they can either deliver their product the way people want or someone else will do it for them. Once they allow that someone else in, there is a good chance that a lot of that will done in questionable, free way, such as Bit-Torrent.

It's almost sad to see the studios follow the RIAAs playbook, all the time knowing how badly recording studios have performed. Apparently all it takes to run a major corporation is a degree from Harvard and a golf club membership. :rolleyes: