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 […]

Net Neutrality will die, so let’s take the profit out of killing it.

The U.S. Federal Communication Commission, under the leadership of chairman Ajit Pai, will next week set in motion the end of Net Neutrality in the USA. This is an unfortunate situation that will cause lots of news stories to be written in the days ahead, but I’m pretty sure the fix is in and this change is going to happen. No matter how many protesters merge on their local Verizon store, no matter how many impassioned editorials are written, it’s going to happen. The real question is what can be done in response to take the profit out of killing it?  I have a plan.

The concept of Net […]

Final Prediction #10: Apple will buy Dish Network

2016predictionsA third of the people who read this column don’t live in the USA so maybe this prediction isn’t interesting to them, but I think Apple will buy Dish Network, the American direct satellite TV broadcaster. It’s the only acquisition that will give Apple the kind of entry point they want into the TV business, allowing Cupertino to create overnight an over-the-top (OTT) Internet streaming video service — effectively an Internet cable system.

Buying Dish would be a bold move for Apple because all the benefits Cupertino seeks aren’t obviously available. True, Dish has 14 million U.S. subscribers (I am one of those) who get 100+ channels of TV from the sky. True, Dish […]

Lost Prediction #4 — My Steve Jobs movie returns to Netflix

2016predictionsAt least one reader pointed out that I somehow missed 2016 Prediction #4, so let me throw something in right here. Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview will shortly return to Netflix worldwide!

Our movie was on Netflix in the USA and Canada for a couple of years (it’s still streaming on Netflix in the UK) but the North American deal ended sometime in November when rights reverted from Magnolia Pictures back to John Gau Productions. The film had already disappeared from iTunes and Amazon, etc., but we hadn’t noticed because, well, Magnolia didn’t bother to mention it and we’re only pretending to be movie producers.

You don’t work directly with these streaming outfits if your body […]

Net Neutrality, Apple, and the future of TV

Screen Shot 2015-03-18 at 11.12.17 AMI’ve been hesitant to comment on the FCC’s proposed Net Neutrality rules until I could read them. You’ll recall the actual rules weren’t released at the time of the vote a couple weeks ago, just characterized this way and that for the press pending the eventual release of the actual order. Well they finally published the rules last week and I’ve since made my way through all 400+ pages (no executive summary commenting for me). And while there are no big surprises — much less smoking guns — in the FCC report, I think that taken along with this week’s Wall Street Journal story […]