The Slow Erosion of Cable Customers to Online Programming May Change Cable

Cable television has a lot to worry about lately after years of complacency and lack of any anti-anxiety medications prescribed to the company honchos. It seems hard to imagine cable companies couldn't have seen the advent of internet programming becoming so popular or even the growth in over-the-air channels that are almost as good if not better than half of all our 500 cable networks. Even I wrote an article here earlier this year about how people on budgets should consider going the route of over-the-air channels since they're all high-definition, have a good assortment of niche programming and live up to that word you don't hear often: Free. For those who want more with a sense of convenience, though, watching programs online has become a lot more popular as everybody tries to consolidate work while keeping up with TV pop culture.

Within that technological world, we have a lot of dichotomies on the truth behind its growth. Sometimes you'll hear groups say that the advent of TV on the internet isn't growing fast enough to really matter in the bigger picture. Then you'll get other reports that say it's growing faster than ever and becoming a true threat to the state of watching real TV through cable services.

It might be easy to think that the cable companies themselves are planting a subtle word out there that online programming isn't a threat when it really is. Now, though, those who control cable are finally admitting that they're truly worried at the sign of people gravitating toward watching shows at places such as Hulu.com rather than turning on the TV and making cable behemoth Comcast richer. It's Comcast themselves (the mostly dominate cable system throughout the U.S.) who seem the most worried. Perhaps that's why we're inundated lately with those surreal and gratingly monotone "C-O-M-C-A-S-T" ads so we don't forget who they are.

Truth be told, I was initially uncomfortable in wanting to watch a movie or even a TV show on my computer monitor. For at least a couple of years, I supported cable over satellite and internet as the best alternative to your TV entertainment needs. The only reason behind that was in the lack of comfort sitting at a computer to watch a show you missed, a movie on DVD or an obscure flick found on Hulu.com. But after becoming busier working on my computer more often, I finally found a comfort zone in being able to call up a TV episode I may have missed or even a retro show on IMDb.com, Hulu or NBC.com. As if an epiphany, I noticed that you can be drawn deeper into a show while watching on a high-quality computer monitor (preferably a new hi-def one). And being able to stop it whenever you want to go instantly back to your work is true consolidation at its finest.

There isn't a doubt that other people are starting to realize the convenience and comfort of this themselves. Perhaps it goes against the wishes of our parents who said to never sit too close to the TV without the threat of getting an unknown illness. Seeing shows a little closer on your computer monitor, however, does something to envelop you more into what you're watching than it oddly does watching eight to ten feet away on your hi-def TV. That is, unless you're still a kid at heart and lie down on the floor at the edge of your TV to watch your favorite shows.

With the majority of the American populace soon to be increasing that on their computer monitors instead, cable will have to do something to stay relevant in coming decades. The best scenario is using the old business prospect of joining them instead of beating them.
____

The general business consensus is that Comcast making a deal with Hulu and all the other online media sites would help the cable industry survive via a compromise. That compromise would be someone such as Comcast paying to acquire Hulu's library that could then be accessed on special websites designed through the cable companies. The kicker would be additional programs Hulu doesn't have and subsequently both corporate entities profiting heartily. Through this method, cable can still survive via providing their customers some special bonus programming online that you couldn't see otherwise.

Eventually this evolves into the question of whether such a business connection between cable and online programming sites will bring down the networks as a viable medium through television. It's a realistic scenario of our televisions eventually turning into mere devices to play our DVD's and then turning to see nothing but a vast array of blank screens on every channel. Then we'll go online to where the networks all moved and try to compete all over again in an all-new 500 channel universe.

Of course, if that happened, media companies would only be in business for high-speed internet and nothing on a regular television. For someone like Comcast, that's a huge chunk taken out of their company, though technically still possible when interest in internet would increase exponentially in place of cable. It also could incite a whole new direction of creativity when dealing with such a new and presumably exciting frontier. The curiosity factor of watching all our news, information and entertainment in some kind of hybrid of internet and TV could be a valuable incentive toward getting into the same mindset producers, directors and writers were in during television's earliest days.

The lackluster writing and programming of television in recent years seems to be a diffuse lack of excitement over the medium itself. When you have an all-new medium, the push toward creating something innovative in new territory can easily get reignited. On a psychological level in the way television works now, writing for TV only breeds worthless television when the writers see it that way on a constant basis. But the inspiration of a new medium couldn't be more intoxicating, knowingly or not, for those who create entertainment for a living.

And for cable companies who get their fingers in that pie, there won't be need for panic at their board meetings. Any panic would only be via the customers who might have to endure an eventual consolidation of all media companies into one entity who control what we watch on that internet television hybrid...

Source:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc20090430_237972.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5