Internet TV and The Death of Cable TV

Products have life cycles, which is about all one has to know about changing dynamics in the video business. And while there might yet remain a period of time before a firm trend can be definitively confirmed, "cable TV" might finally have reached that point in the product life cycle where its decline begins.

Telcos have a bit more experience with this sort of thing, as fixed-line voice seems to have reached a clear product life cycle peak in 2000 or 2001, depending on which set of data one looks at. Before that, telcos had to deal with a decades-long decline of stand-alone long distance, not so much in terms of usage, but a historic disruption of profit margins.

Since 2000, though, there has been a steady decline of fixed-line subscriptions. And it is starting to appear as if 2010 might mark a similar turning point for multichannel video, as we now have had two consecutive quarters of overall subscriber decline, something that never has happened before.

A rapid change to new forms of digital delivery will take some time, even though increased talk about "the death of cable TV" certainly will escalate. Content owner financial interests are the main reason. Simply put, content owners have learned quite a lot about the economics of digital distribution and are moving deliberately, to avoid cannibalizing existing business models before the new mechanisms can be perfected.

“The networks aren’t blocking Google TV because it’s Google," AdAge notes. "They are blocking Google TV because it is putting a web TV show, with web TV show economics, on a TV, which would be incredibly disruptive to their business."

Internet TV and The Death of Cable TV

Multichannel Video Subscriptions Grow in Major Markets, Shrink Elsewhere

The number of U.S. households paying for TV subscriptions is falling outside the largest TV markets, and growing in the biggest markets, a new analysis by MediaBiz suggests.

Between the first and third quarters of this year, 335,000 fewer homes out of 100 million subscribed to TV service from a cable, satellite or telecom company, according to research firm SNL Kagan.

But the latest local data show that subscriber drops have largely fallen outside the biggest markets. The 10 biggest media markets collectively saw their number of TV subscribers grow by 125,000 from the first quarter to the second quarter, while the rest of the country lost 279,000 between those two periods, according to MediaBiz.

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Facebook: 25% of All Page Views in U.S.

Nearly one in four page views in the United States took place on Facebook.com for the week ending November 13, 2010.

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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty

Debt Service Now is the 800-Pound Gorilla of Spending

http://mercatus.org/publication/cost-debt-drives-long-term-spending-explosion

Mobile Revenue Model Has to Change

"Frankly, we are not going to realize the financial return that we are looking for unless we move into the application space or we attract others into that application space on our network; that’s really how we are going to realize value from our network, how it becomes relevant for our customers.' - APAC telco exec"

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Netflix Launches U.S. Streaming-Only Service

Netflix has introduced a $7.99 streaming-only subscription plan in the United States for the first time. The plan, which allows members to instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix to TVs and computers, is available now to both new and existing members.

The company also announced that the price of its popular subscription combining unlimited movies and TV shows streamed instantly over the Internet and unlimited DVDs delivered quickly by mail, with one DVD out at a time, will increase by a dollar a month to $9.99. Prices of subscription plans allowing for more DVDs out at a time will also increase.

Netflix Launches U.S. Subscription Plan for Streaming Movies & TV Shows Over the Internet for $7.99 a Month

"Collaboration" and "Telepresence" Trump "Unified Communications" and "Videoconferencing"

One can argue about the future integration of video into today's voice, email, messaging, conferencing and broader unified communications approaches. Cisco prefers the term "telepresence" to "videoconferencing," for example. In fact, Cisco also prefers the term "collaboration" to "unifed communications."

In part, that is because Cisco is banking on video becoming integrated into other existing modes of communication, and in part because "unified communications," whatever you think UC is, and whatever you think it includes, has been in the marketplace long enough to have lost some of its luster.

The change of nomenclature has been underway for a few years already.

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