It's been long predicted, and in many ways, it's already here if you know the right people; TV is having an iPod moment. Don't take my word for it, though: take Vint Cerf's.
Cerf's address to the great and good at the Edinburgh festival makes for fascinating reading, and it's a tad recursive - you can watch a clip of his interview afterwards courtesy of Reuters TV.
Basically, video content is now freely available on the web. If a PVR or mobile phone can record it, it can also be distributed freely - without much regard for issues of ownership or copyright. This is pretty much what hit the music industry with the combination of CDs and cheap PCs made copying digital music cheap and easy. Bear in mind the usual caveats - home taping didn't kill music, and VCRs gave movie firms a huge boost to sales of their back catalogues instead of killing off the practice of going to the pictures.
What does this mean? Well, forget the company Vint's on the board of for a moment. Google - and by extension YouTube - are the periscope of a big old submarine. Far more important are sites like UKNova, which allow people to download British and other TV shows using Peer to Peer clients. UKNova (if you can get an invite) is a great resource, and possibly a great alternative to a PVR. Virgin, Setanta, Channel 4, BT and Tiscali are among the firms that are trying to provide TV on Demand, but they
have to compete with the free - downloadable TV shows that people have just recorded from broadcast themselves and shared. The likes of UKNova may stand on shaky legal ground, but people want content, and they get it. If I want to do a little viewing around the birth of skateboarding, I will buy or rent Dogtown and Z Boys, but I'll also catch a World in Action documentary on skateboarders on Google Video.
I'm expecting TV companies, certainly in the UK, to take a more enlightened approach than the RIAA, which boneheadedly refuses to accept that its business model needs to change. On the other hand, I also expect TV firms to see this as a revenue opportunity. People are used to seeing ads online and on television - both media suit it well. What do you think?
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