Monday, April 02, 2007
The New Golden Age of TV
by
Stories abound reporting the decline of traditional television, but if Steve Rubel is correct, TV might be entering a new golden age. Rubel claims there have been two great software development platforms:
1) The personal computer
2) The programmable web
Rubel predicts the next big development platform will be television, and he makes a good point. Until now, the broadcast networks, cable companies and satellite programming have provided almost all the scheduled content options on television. But with the advent of Apple TV and other new options, consumers may soon have an almost limitless range of options from which to choose, and software is the key to making that happen (see 57,000 Channels and Nothing On).
While Rubel predicts the average daily time spent on the Internet will soon overtake the average time spent on television, he maintains both will remain extremely popular, and goes on to say that it will become increasingly meaningless to distinguish between the source of the content. Apple TV now helps bridge the gap between content accessed via the Web (iTunes) and traditional TV content, but the technology that will allow TVs to eventually access the Internet directly is IPTV. In fact, this article at Read/Write Web highlights three new IPTV start-ups: Joost, Babelgum and Zattoo. In essence, these start-ups are using software to allow IPTV enabled televisions to receive Web content.
Gartner Research predicts within three short years there will be 48 million viewers of IPTV, which is why so many players (Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.) have a keen interest in this technology. One thing is for certain—the “channels” available to consumers on their TVs will expand enormously as Web content finds its way on the “big box.” Similar to other industries, the Internet will be a disruptive force when it reaches a tipping point on television. This is bound to shake up traditional television economics from both the program production and marketing/advertising perspectives.
