My Back Page: What Do the Following Have in Common?
New video game "effects" on Philips TVs. The Sprint/cable deal. "Free" VOD. MobiTV. Slingbox. ReplayTV for PCs. IPod w/video plus downloads. Fly pen computers. Mark Cuban’s digital movie theaters (and day-and-date DVDs). DVDs of TV series…old and new. Akimbo. A la carte. Google video searches. Video games. Video game consoles. Hi-def TV…and only half who own the sets actually get (in the physical and metaphysical sense) TV pictures in hi-def! The federally mandated "digital deadline." A new world of vouchers? Movielink. TiVo. The portable "Dish." Digital cameras with 5-plus megapixels and video streaming. "Indecency." The urge to merge. Cisco + Scientific-Atlanta (besides just being a really smart deal). Windows beginning to collapse. The defenestration of content? Hurdles of innovation…otherwise known as: Which devil? Comcast? DirecTV (that is, News Corp.)? EchoStar? and/or Time Warner Cable? A mythical "fifth" way? Or, in the ultimate look at perspective, how much does leverage allow you to get just for the fact of leverage itself? (Other, I suppose, than "lots"!) IPTV…or, does Microsoft still matter in the next world? The next-generation DVD format wars. CBS demanding dollars for cable carriage. Mel Karmazin charging sternly (that’s a joke, son) ahead. Peer-to-peer…and so on and on and on and on, maybe. VoIP. Sports salaries. TotalVid. The banks…investment and otherwise. Google + AOL? Carl Icahn and Jeff Bewkes (wonder if they know one another?). Compression…or, how much? Accessible vs. just streaming…or, will linear go away? News. Piracy. Franchising…or not. A "level playing field"? (Excluding the playing field that counts the most…the NFL.) Gatekeepers. Or not. The "corduroy crew." The deals. The tabloids…print, Internet and broadcast. Infotainment. And that’s just some of "it." It…meaning "chaos." Or, more specifically, "opportunity." The media world hasn’t been in this much flux in decades…since cable 1) began importing signals and then 2) creating them. Now, anything goes. And for the cable industry (if that’s the right appellation), it means a really big opportunity to exploit the best infrastructure in the communications marketplace. Bar none. Climbing in the footsteps of the Anasazi at the Transkawi ruins near Los Alamos in New Mexico. Didn’t find any of them, though.
