The Toronto Star, like many traditional media outlets, must be having a hard time selling papers. That may be why it resorted to a sensationalized article on Tuesday about Apple TV.
Among my favourite linesfrom the article? From the ‘duhhh’ department, the article quotes Colin Dixon (no affiliation given in the article, but he is from Dallas-area consultancy TDG Research):
I don’t think that traditional broadcast – cable and satellite – are going away tomorrow, but they must change to maintain market share.
Cable and satellite have pretty darn close to 100% market share. In reality, they can change all you want, but they can’t maintain that kind of market share. No former monopoly expects to retain that kind of share.
The article continues:
“Cable is notoriously slow to move until they see a big impact on the bottom line,” says Dixon, who predicts that if the cable companies don’t get on board with digital distribution, the first public bankruptcies could be seen by 2010.
No idea what the basis is for any of the 3 concepts in this paragraph: slow moving; unwillingness to adapt to digital; public bankruptcies (as opposed to private ones?).
There are obvious signs of a disruption underway to broadcasting caused by user-defined timeshifting. I described the Kobayashi Maru approach to IPTV last August. Apple TV is only part of the disruption. Tivo, Joost (the new name for The Venice Project), Xbox Video, and new Canadian entrant Eye Rock Digital all contribute to a shift away from traditional broadcast TV, beyond the impact of bit-torrents.
Will traditional broadcast distributors develop business models that permit them to share in disintermediated revenues?
What are the implications on bandwidth consumption at the edge of current broadband networks? Can users expect current pricing to be sustained? If a broadband services provider offsets download caps through a revenue sharing agreement with a video service, will Net Neutrality advocates shout “foul”?