Cable TV Model Broken

[SOURCE: Red Herring]
Jonathan Hurd, an analyst with a Boston-based consulting firm, believes the à la carte war between the cable industry and the FCC will affect what TV viewers see in the short term. Ultimately the cable industry will be forced to make even more dramatic changes in how it programs TV content for its subscribers. “The whole notion of channels, bundles of channels, and programming being available only at a fixed time and only in a fixed place is evolving,” said Mr. Hurd. “With TiVo, PVR technology, and SlingBox, people are going to be able to consume video where they want and when they want. The trend is toward flexibility.” Mr. Hurd believes the whole concept of programming channels should be reviewed. A subscriber may like baseball, but not football or basketball, so he or she would be forced to subscribe to ESPN. Mr. Hurd believes the cable channels should offer that subscriber baseball only and perhaps access to music and movies they like based on collaborative filtering.
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15696&hed=Cable+TV+Model+Broken...