The Future of Television

How is a television like a fax machine? They are both obsolete.

Remember a time when nobody had a fax machine? Then suddenly everybody had a fax machine. And now nobody again has a fax machine. What would have previously come by fax today is a PDF attachment to an e-mail or text or to one of a number of messaging services. Well the same transformation is happening to traditional television and for generally similar reasons. And just as fax machines seemed to disappear in just a few years, I’ll be surprised if broadcast TV in the U.S. survives another decade.

Technology transformations are like murders: they require motive, method, and […]

How to cut the cable yet stay within your bandwidth cap

After 31 years of doing this column pretty much without a break, I’m finally back from a family crisis and moving into a new house, which sadly are not the same things. Why don’t I feel rested? I have a big column coming tomorrow but wanted to take this moment to just cover a few things that I’ve noticed during our move.

We have become cable cutters. Before the fire we had satellite TV (Dish) and could have kept it, but I wanted to try finding our video entertainment strictly over the Internet. It’s been an interesting experience so far and has taught us all a few lessons about what I expect […]

It’s Michael Dell versus the world and Dell will win

In my last column I wrote that Dell buying EMC is a great idea (for Dell) and left it to this column to more fully explain why that is so. It takes two columns because there is so much going on here in terms of both business models and technologies. As the title suggests it comes down to Michael Dell against the world and in this case I predict Dell will win, Cisco, HP and IBM will lose, Apple will be relatively unaffected and I don’t really know what it will mean for Microsoft but I think the advantage still lies with Dell.

One thing that is key is every one of these companies except Dell is publicly traded […]

Apple needs Time-Warner Cable more than does Comcast

TWCappleTVTech news changed this week faster than the weather. At the beginning of the week Charter Communications was trying to buy Time-Warner Cable, then on Tuesday Apple was rumored to be close to a deal for Apple TV to replace or augment Time-Warner’s cable boxes, then on Thursday both stories crashed and burned when Comcast bought TWC out from under Charter, killing the Apple deal in the process. But does it really have to end that way? Not if Apple is smart.

I don’t care about cable consolidation, frankly, though a lot of other people do, seeing too much power being concentrated in Comcast. I would just like to see things shaken up in the TV […]

Still wired after all these years

Verizon Wireless announced Friday that it was paying $3.6 billion to three cable TV companies — Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks — in exchange for wireless licenses the companies bought in an FCC auction in 2005. Pundits are describing the deal, and especially its cross-marketing provisions, as revolutionary with the potential to change the way we communicate and are entertained. I doubt this. Rather, I think it reflects a failure of the cable companies to compete in other markets.

I remember this license auction and wrote about it at the time. New spectrum was being released and the MSOs were afraid Verizon and AT&T would snap it up to compete with […]