Tag : Hulu

I made bad choices for the first two time-slots at SXSW, so I had high hopes for the third, PayTV vs Internet – The Battle For Your TV, featuring Mark Cuban of HDNet and Avner Rosen of Boxee.

It was good to see a debate between two people who genuinely disagree by 180º on how the future of TV will pan out, even if some of the argument was basically dick-swinging.

Cuban believes that the future of TV is basically the same as the present: subscription services over cable or satellite, with a light dash of so-called ‘Interactive TV’. Rosen believes, as I do, that the future of TV is on the web. To be clear: everyone sane accepts that we will continue to have a dedicated large screen in our houses on which we watch video. I just don’t believe that broadcast TV has a future that looks anything like the present, if it has one at all.

Iplayer, Hulu, Vimeo and Youtube have made it manifestly evident that TV is facing a huge challenge from the web, not just for revenues and mindshare but also as an alternative channel to market. But it’s not just a quantitative ‘cheap and many’ channels issue; there’s likely to be a profound qualitative change in how we watch television that threatens the value of things that conventional TV people hold as given: things like scheduling, channel brands and the primacy of television commissioning.