I’ve been saying for at least a couple of years that television is changing. In fact it’s next in line to a major shift, like the music industry is experiencing.
I firmly believe that television shows will become subscription based. In fact, they already are, we just subscribe to a channel and time, rather than a particular “feed.”
Sport, and some news events, will require broadcast (or streaming), but it makes more sense to subscribe to a show over the air or on the Net, to capture most of your television needs.
I think this trend is best expressed with the iTunes Music Store, and the ability to purchase show. Looks like it’s doing well.
At his keynote speech Monday at the TelecomNext show in Las Vegas, Disney CEO Bob Iger said Disney content has surpassed 4 million downloads on iTunes since October 2005, when the media company first made television programming available on the new iPods.
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Click Here!That data point is indicative of the biggest change in the TV business, he said. “Technology has transformed authority from the distributor and creator to the consumer. Today’s consumer is more tech-savvy and governs how and when and at what price content is sent to them,” he said. ITunes also introduced the concept of new distribution windows, he said. Disney has been a proponent of re-evaluating distribution windows for content in general.
While content is seemingly the beneficiary of the trend toward multiple and diverse platforms, Mr. Iger thinks the proliferation of platforms will actually separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to programming. “You will see a larger disparity in this new world order between what is good and what is inferior,” he said.
To succeed in this new world order, content providers and distributors must supply easy-to-use interfaces, he added.
