The Jeff Pulver Blog: Wall Street Journal: Turn On, Tune Out, Click Here

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October 12, 2008

Wall Street Journal: Turn On, Tune Out, Click Here

I enjoyed reading Nick Wingfield’s recent story in the the WSJ - Turn On, Tune Out, Click Here “TV Viewers Cut Cable's Cord; Here's What They're Watching Online Instead”

Nick’s story enforces thoughts I shared earlier this year in my blog post: Internet TV may pose threat to Cable Companies by 2012.

“The Cable Version of “Wireless Conversion” is going to happen.

For the past eight years, billions of dollars of fixed-line revenue has been lost by phone companies around the world as their customers have given up using fixed telephone lines in favor of purchasing their primary phone service from wireless carriers. This trend is known as “Wireless Conversion” and this is revenue that will most likely never be replaced by the phone companies.

In the near future, I expect cable companies to 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 repurposed and available 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. This trend was one of the inspirations behind the recent launch of PrimeTimeRewind.TV”

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Like it or not, Television has been Disrupted. It is just a matter of time before the media industry recognizes this.

Tags: Internet TV, Apple TV, Nick Wingfield, Cable TV, Jeff Pulver

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Posted by jeff on October 12, 2008 10:58 AM | Permalink

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Posted by: 仓储笼 at October 17, 2008 08:40 PM

I'm hopeful that the cable and satellite TV players will be pushed out of the picture and that the producers of TV content and consumers of TV content will be more directly linked over IP. I'm tired of paying DirecTV so much money to simply send a signal to my house. I'm tired of being forced into buying their hardware and then also paying the monthly idiot charge per box. I'd be much happier getting that content over my existing internet connection, having more freedom of choice for what hardware I'm using, and seeing the $$ go more directly to the content producers. I hope your 2012 forecast is right. It can't happen soon enough. I'm concerned however that the big content deals (like major league baseball and the national football league with DirecTV) is going to hold a lot of important content hostage to the incumbents and delay this ...

Posted by: TravisV at October 13, 2008 11:13 AM

I think you're correct in your observation, and the trend may only accelerate in the downturn, as people older than 24 step back, look at their expenses and try to figure out what to cut. This is a generation who, while they grew up with TV, if they had to choose TV or their internet connection - guess which way many of them will go?

Posted by: Ted at October 12, 2008 03:32 PM

Hi there,

I do agree with your intuition : it's even more true in France or in Europe in general; there's a big gap for young adults (16-24) who generally do not follow classic TV channels (because they're studying, because they're traveling etc.). So as kids who started following youtube channels or long-tailed niche web-TVs could never come back to cable TVs...

Posted by: Laurent at October 12, 2008 12:42 PM

October 12, 2008

Wall Street Journal: Turn On, Tune Out, Click Here

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