“The citadel of TV profits” is an excellent metaphor that vividly illustrates the current (outgoing) business model of the big networks. It can’t rightly be called a monopoly, but at the very least it’s a semi-collusive aristocracy that have bought for themselves an almost unassailable position.
I tend to harp about how the internet is a great democratizing and disruptive force. Maybe I’m biased, but I like to see people succeed based on merit, not by suffocating the competition. Until the internet, TV was not one of those open marketplaces that allowed much competition. The networks have saturated the market to a point where it’s essentially impossible to compete with them on the airwaves.
Thankfully, the internet doesn’t need the airwaves.
From the NYT article linked above:
[Netflix] announced on Facebook that customers had watched four billion hours of streaming video in the first three months of the year. […] that eye-popping number would make it the most-watched cable television network. Except it isn’t on cable, isn’t on television and isn’t a network.
It looks like viewers are voting with their wallets and their remote. Even when people still watch “regular” TV, they increasingly skip commercials. The networks are none too happy about these siege engines lining up against their citadel’s walls, so they do what any good modern-day oligopoly does – take legal action:
Networks are stepping up the fight against Dish Network’s Hopper, which automatically skips the commercials in network programming. Aereo won a court decision on April 1, letting it continue its rollout of a service through which consumers can access broadcast signals online without Aereo paying any of the estimated $3 billion that broadcasters will take in from retransmission fees by 2015.
All in all, it looks like networks will finally have to compete on the quality of their product, not their ability to attrit their opponents or legislate them into oblivion. It’s about time.
Now, if only the same thing could happen to Canadian telecom companies…