Cory Bergman from Lost Remote is a brave man. He ditched cable and went with an Apple TV a-la-carte solution for a week. The result: he was quite fine, thank you. He found most of what he was looking for, saved some cash and discovered new programming and podcasts in the process. Oh yeah and he didn't watch a single ad!
At home I have a Microsoft Xbox 360 (they're one of our clients) and an Apple TV connected to my Sony HDTV. The content I download off the Internet for the two set top boxes has definitely eaten into my time with cable. The latter cannot be beat for live news and sports - yet. But remember, this is essentially opening day of a nine inning IPTV game. You can imagine all of the possibilities already as audiences start adding Internet-connected set-tops and niche HD content comes in from everywhere - professionals, brands and amateurs.
All of the TV nets, including HD-pure plays like INHD and HDnet that don't have a lot of competition yet, need to seriously wake up. The same goes for the advertisers that fund them. Please, please please read Bob Garfield's Chaos 2.0. He talks about the Long Tail's impact on the economics of media and advertising. Right now, TV is still dominated by it. Things are going to change quickly as people recognize the value of getting their free and paid content over the Internet. They will save more casual viewers money and also allow them to dig deeper into their interests. Every network should be making their goods available on these platforms. Not all are.
Cory's experiment proves that it is totally possible today to go a-la-carte - and we're just getting going. More on this here, here and here. Are you sick of me shaking this stick yet? I cannot be the only person in marketing who sees the collision coming. Maybe there's a "don't look at the train coming at you" philosophy since it's so disruptive and there's a lot of money at stake.
