The social future of television
Ethan Zuckerman:
Herkko [Hietanen of the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology] sees a near-fatal embrace between content providers and cable companies. They’re co-dependent, and scared of alienating one another. But this dependency can limit innovation in services. We’ve seen less development around on-demand video, the ability to watch on demand than we might expect than we might expect. Instead, we’ve seen “enhancements” like DRM and the broadcast flag, and heavy litigation against anyone entering the markets. Basically, we see a lot of intelligence added at the center of a network, with dumb, constrained edges that are prevented from innovating.This is the most succinct analysis of the state of television that I’ve seen in some time, and describes precisely why I no longer participate as a TV “viewer.” Those exceptional few shows that I simply love I’ll acquire via iTunes or, failing that, BitTorrent, with no ads, no hassles and relatively good portability, so long as I can connect the display to my laptop.
In short, I’ll pay you for good content if you get out of my way and let me. For the rest, I just don’t bother any more.
