TV will go the same way as Newspapers shock...Yawn.

Silicon Alley Investor has just written a rather good article outlining why TV will go through the same pressures that Newspapers and Music are going through. Points I liked were:

The best content creators will do just fine. Video storytelling won't go away. Compared to the people who produced Battlestar Galactica, the Sopranos, and West Wing, etc., the folks who post to YouTube generally suck at it. So great content creators won't have to worry about them.

The lousy content creators will disappear. No big loss. And no big change.

The cable companies will become dumb pipes, and they'll get disintermediated. We won't need Brian Roberts to negotiate a deal with the Tennis Channel for us (or, rather, to prevent us from getting the Tennis Channel because of some contract dispute). We'll just go direct.

The phone companies will remain dumb pipes.

The wireless companies will become dumber pipes.

The competition between the multiple dumb pipes will eventually, we pray, result in lower prices for consumers for the only thing we will really need: Ubiquitous high-speed Internet access.

Box and device companies will remain box and device companies. Unless Apple somehow creates a new global chokepoint via the iPhone.

Networks that produce live news, sports, and entertainment will offer the content direct to consumers. But they'll no longer get paid big carriage fees from cable companies.

A few clever online aggregators--YouTube? Hulu? Cable companies? Netflix?--will create nice video portals and build powerful new businesses. At these portals, you'll be able to sign up to watch anything in the world on any device you want. You'll be able choose among multiple subscription models (monthly, a la carte). You'll also have a basic "what's on" option in case you just want to watch TV.

When will this happen? Over the next 5-10 years. And it will leave today's TV industry looking like today's newspaper industry.

And why do I like it - because we worked out this a year ago, and its available in far more detail than SAI does it for sale in our report on the Future of Online Video (go here for a copy, rool up, roll up!).

Yes, at the risk of blowing our own trumpet, We Woz There (see the slides above giving the scenarios for the industry that put the SAI work into context). Also see some of the other work in previous posts here and here and here).

Nice to see these expert analysts get there eventually .