More on Movie & TV Biz From Doc

The movie and TV business is changing. Doc Searls adds some great additional thoughts to what I was blogging about here, here, and here.

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Apple Continues to Dominate Digital Content Delivery

There was a period of a few weeks that I was eagerly posting any new announcements Apple made regarding the addition of television shows to the iTunes store. Now that CBS has quickly ditched its relationship with Google Video and is talking with Apple it seems Apple’s blitzkrieg into video delivery is nearly over and they’ve already won. Showtime added three of its shows this week which makes them the first pay network to do so. Now if Apple could get HBO’s award-winning collection of shows I think you could say game over without any argument.

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The Great Extinction Redux

Will future social scientists looking back on this age be puzzled by what so abruptly changed the economy, society, and the world business climate in just a few short years? If they’re probing for answers, I’ll assume they won’t blame a large heavenly object for today’s cataclysmic reordering. But, similar to the comet that struck earth and wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago, the rapid changes of our present period will likely lead to some business model extinctions.

Technology and the Internet are rapidly altering the business platform for almost all organizations. The changes are swift and deep.

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Notebook TV

TV’s keep getting bigger...huge in some cases. Then, Apple comes along and offers the small option...enabling people to access a growing list of TV content on a video iPod. What’s missing here is the middle market: notebook TV. Of course, you can already play DVD movies on many notebook computers, but I’m talking about downloadable or streaming current television shows that go straight to your notebook computer.

Notebook computers are popular for a good reason. They can hold a lot of content. They’re portable, amazingly versatile and the screen size is an acceptable size for viewing comfortably. It can’t be long before notebook TV will be another popular option for what today is mostly only available on the stationary TVs anchored to the floor or wall in Amercian family rooms. 

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Dots and Dashes Make Way for Dot Com

On Jan. 27, Western Union transmitted its last telegram. While most considered the 162-year-old dots-and-dashes technology quaint, it easily leads the list as the communication medium that had the most dramatic impact on society.

The Internet, the printing press and radio all changed culture in important ways; but they all grew out of previous communication forms. The electromagnetic telegraph was fundamentally different from anything that came before. Once telegraph wires came to town, the community was connected to the world. Messages from across the nation, and eventually around the world, could be sent and received almost instantly. The results of elections, military battles and the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk were known within hours, rather than weeks.

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