An Update to "A Peak Into the Future of TV"

An article by Ayelet Noff    7 Comments

TechCrunch posted today that a new study by Motorola has found that 45% of Europeans now watch television online. Motorola’s Karl Elliot told the BBC: “Viewers across Europe are no longer satisfied with fitting into schedules dictated by broadcasters and are turning to the choice and flexibility offered by TV over the internet….We are witnessing a nation of citizen schedulers who are in control of their entertainment, allowing them to watch what they want, how and when they want it.”

Some who commented on this TechCrunch article argued that they do not believe this could be such a high percentage. In any case, whether it’s 45% or even a bit less, the message is still clear – people are saying: I want my internet tv! If you’ve been following my blog for a while, this must not come as a surprise to you.

Jeff Pulver has recently written a very interesting article entitled: “Internet TV may pose threat to Cable Companies by Decade’s End”. In it, he writes:

“In the near future, I expect cable companies may start to suffer a similar parallel fate as the wireline phone companies. This eventually will mean billions of dollars of revenue loss without any notion of being able to replace the lost revenue. And I expect we will start to see this trend happen first in the 16-24 year old demographic.

How does this happen? It happens because there is a portion of the existing 16-24 generation which does not watch traditional broadcast TV and they are not watching Cable TV. What they are watching is TV content on the internet. And when these kids leave home and go off to college, they are not signing up for cable TV service in their dorm rooms. Instead they are continuing to watch their favorite TV shows thanks to BitTorrent or are going online to the network websites to catch up with a missed show or in some cases they are also going to iTunes and purchasing the shows to watch on their video iPods and computers.”

Kfir Pravda also warns the cable companies:

“It seems to me that these industries are kind of dinosaurs, looking at the meteor coming and thinking that everything will be ok. Just like some of the big production companies, missing the fact that people create good content for a fraction of the money they are spending.”

Lastly, Jim Johnson points out that:

“Michael Eisner has a teen drama airing on MySpace. The BBC recently launched iPlayer. NBC, NewsCorp, and Comcast have signed an agreement to provide shows online. The BBC is the latest European network to provide online programming.”

Need more proof?

Technorati tags: techcrunch, tv, motorola, bbc, internet, internet tv, jeff pulver, cable, bittorrent, itunes, ipod, kfir pravda, jim johnson, michael eisner, myspace, iplayer, nbc, newscorp, comcast