The New York Times is running an article with a popular theme: namely that broadband video is over-hyped as a threat to traditional cable TV. Many people cut the cord only to find out that can’t gain access to the content they want anywhere if they don’t have a cable TV connection — something the Cable industry’s “TV Anywhere” model encourages, given it requires a cable TV connection to get access to the industry’s walled-garden playground. As such, cord cutters are still a minority:A New York Times/CBS News poll this month found that 88 percent of respondents paid for traditional TV service. Just 15 percent of those subscribers had considered replacing it with Internet video services like Hulu and YouTube. . . Even through the downturn, the number of people subscribing to pay TV continued to grow. Cable, satellite and fiber-optic providers added 677,000 customers in the first quarter of this year, according to the investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein.We’ve consistently shown how internet video ad revenue is minuscule when compared to traditional TV, and that it will be that way for another decade. Still, once someone develops the perfect broadband video living room solution, all of this can change rather quickly. There’s a massive potential market out there of users tired of overpaying for television service and eager to pay for a la carte TV.
read comment(s)