SubscribeTV and the Internet: Both Dead & Boring?
Posted in IPTV, Television, Internet, News on August 30th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
Two ideas made the rounds in the blogosphere this week. The first one, a prediction from Vint Cerf, “founding father of the Internet” and Google’s Vice President: it’s the end of TV, as we know it. TV is dying. Upon further reading and beyond the sensationalist headers, what Cerf means is that the way we consume TV contents and how we get to them is changing. As downloading or streaming contents directly from the Internet nears the mainstream, aerial, cable and satellite TV are losing importance and may soon be relegated to a secondary role. Cerf claims that 85% of all TV contents are pre-recorded, while only 15% are Live TV. Recorded contents are thus a natural fit to be downloaded as they don’t lose value if watched “a la carte” at any moment’s time. In Cerf’s words, TV is reaching it’s iPod moment. Pirated or not, downloaded video content is becoming the next digital media commodity.
This takes us to the second most talked about article this week: “The Internet is Dead & Boring“. A recent statement and later on blog post by Mark Cuban, dot com billionare and someone we frequently link to. Cuban argues that as much as the Internet has been our generation’s groundbreaking technology, like TV, cars or the printing press, the Internet has stopped evolving and has become a utility. Cuban explains that the innovation cycle has stopped because the Internet infrastructure can’t keep up. Om Malik agrees. Applications like Facebook, YouTube or Myspace prove, according to Cuban, the stability of the Internet as a utility. The fact that as Cerf points out, the Internet has become our media gateway, first with music and now with TV, would strengthen Cuban’s point of the Internet as a utility.
Upgrading the Internet is a current, ongoing, debate. The infrastructure debate takes us back to Vint Cerf: Cerf argues that the supposed bandwidth and infrastructure limits (the very same Cuban talks about) are nothing but “scare tactics” by the same pundits that predicted, 20 years ago, that the Internet would collapse if it ever went mainstream. Very Recently, for example, UK ISP’s were complaining about it because of the BBC’s iPlayer.
Last June we talked about how Live TV is where traditional broadcasters will live on. Cerf brought to the spotlight the fact that this change is indeed taking place, regardless of broadcasters. Infrastructure debates notwithstanding, Cuban’s article proves it as well: the Internet has become a commodity to the mainstream. It’s increasingly becoming the medium of choice for media consumption. Does this mean then the Internet and TV are dead, boring and unable to grow anymore? Probably not. Neither TV or the Internet will die. As with most things, they will simply evolve and change. Maybe, the only ones dying will be those companies unable or unwilling to keep up with the changes.
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