More Good News for Consumers: Bad News for TV

Google TV (google.com/tv) is getting ready to go. Today they published this video explaining how the new service will work - brining all of the content of the WWW to your TV:



There is also speculation that Apple is moving in a similar direction - turning the Mac Mini into a set top box - again brining all of the content of the web - including all Apple compatible apps and games to your TV screen.

This is certainly bad news for cable and satellite providers - not necessarily for TV but TV will have to understand that they need to compete with a much broader array of content and, as I keep saying, that there will be absolutely zero value in re-broadcasting content made by others. This means re-broadcasting American network shows and it means that the tendency of many news channels of "integrating the web" by including popular YouTube videos will be a massive fail.

It also means that, because an increasing slice of the audience will be on Twitter and other real time services while they watch TV that you will have to work harder to keep the audience tuned in - breaking news, or other programming may steal part of your audience in mid-show.

In related news AmNet ABC failed in their response to Web TV by announcing that, because of increases in the size of the web audience for their programming they were doubling the number of ads in online programming - the appropriate response to a larger audience is to increase the price of ads, not the number of them. As I pointed out above you will be in a constant battle to keep your audience engaged. If you go into a lengthy commercial break you will find the audience smaller after the break - and that's not counting the number of people who will simply download your show from elsewhere - without any ads. No legislation is going to put an end to that behavior, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube and a good chunk of the audience has gotten used to it, likes it, and knows how to mask their IP.

The odds of winning the war on drugs (actually eliminating illegal drug use) are better than the odds of stopping file sharing now.