My Back Page: The Times…!

Whoa! Yeah! The times, they been a-changin’…
    Remember when this was the cable industry?
    Remember when there were “cable” networks?
    That’s all so, so yesterday.
    “Cable” networks are distributed via satellite directly to consumers…bypassing that gatekeeping head-end for a “head-end” of transponders.
    “Cable” networks are distributed via competing telephone company infrastructures that mimic cable.
And now even over-the-airhead television programs are delivered via free simultaneous streaming broadband video (a la CBS Evening News With Katie Couric).
    And CBS wants to charge for retransmission consent?
    The world gets more and more curious.
    So programmers can bypass all four gatekeepers!
(Note: broadcasters, cable operators, satellite platforms and telephone companies…for now; not to mention Wal-Mart.)
    And so can advertisers.
    Wildest idea I’ve seen is seven “channels” of Bud.TV over the World Wide Web.
    What if Anheuser-Busch bid for those extra eight NFL games?
    Far-fetched?
    Sure.
    But so was the very concept of Monday Night Football on ESPN.
    For CableWorld’s Cable Hall of Fame feature, I was talking with HBO’s Bob Zitter, who has been changing how folks consume television for 25 years.
    He made an interesting assertion: One of the biggest changes on the horizon will involve video search.
    You see, the problem won’t be a subscriber interface that lets you check what’s on which channel when or what’s available from a few dozen video-on-demand programs…the problem is going to be choosing from hundreds of thousands of programs. Not channels necessarily. Programs.
    How we gonna do that?
    As Bob noted, we’ve watched the choices grow from three channels to the mythical 500
channels and have, I think, stumbled along
providing guides for that.
    Just imagine the choices within the next decade!
    Or trying to pick a program to watch.
    Can you shout “Branding!”
    How soon before Procter & Gamble revives the concept of soap operas that they produce and then self-distribute on Internet-branded video streams?
    Or how long will it take before the other major beer companies mimic Bud?
    (The Bud-Light Channel only fills part of the frame.)
    A sitcom set in Macy’s? That would be one way to launch the changes at Federated Department Stores this fall. (Quick, call their communications directors or ad agency.)
    Well, you get the idea…more changes on the way.