Television in Transition

That medium most central to news and entertainment life during the latter half of the 20th century is rapidly changing before our eyes. The internet has changed and continues to change everything else - books, magazines, newspapers, travel, banking, you name it - but television has been the longest holdout, particularly cable TV.

That cable still survives these days is particularly remarkable when you consider that a lot of the content that people like to view is available for free on the internet, while the cable companies charge an arm and a leg for it.

Many people realize this, and surveys are reporting hundreds of thousands of people discontinuing their cable service. And many more planning to do so during the coming year.

People are discovering the entertainment value of sites like Youtube, which offers its content for free. Also, movie services like Netflix are catching on and many of the news services offer their programs and news programs on archive and sometimes on a live streaming basis. Quality of internet content on the big screen is getting better too, and in many cases as good as regular TV.

The most interesting aspect of this changing part of the world from a business point of view is that there must be a way for the providers of the content to get paid for their product, whether it be music, movies or news features. Right from the people/actors doing their part to the companies providing the equipment and marketing expertise to get their work to the public. So "for free" may be appealing to the audience, and especially to the young who often feel that everything should be free, but free is just not sustainable.

This means that the companies in the TV business need to find new business models. that may not be as hard as it first seems. They already have strong support of advertisers - the most likely source of revenue. All they need to do is to convince the advertisers that it is worth their while to spend big bucks on advertising on the internet. As the audience shifts over, this will be an easier task.

The established players also need to find ways to compete with new players like Google TV and Apple TV.

Musicians have adapted quite well. Justin Beiber is a good example, who got his start through his parents putting his videos on YouTube. They of course went viral and the rest is now history. We can expect more YouTube stars in various fields - not just music.

The end result will not be the end of TV. It will mark the end of cable TV as we know it. And it will result in new business models for everyone in the supply chain and will mark a wonderful new era in TV content for the audience.

For a good article on this topic, check out this link.