Mark Suster: The Future of Television & The Digital Living Room

Interesting post.

I have to disagree on one point: content bundling. We, as consumers, want content to be unbundled (so called "a la carte" cable). Nobody else wants this. Not the content creators nor the content distributors.

Content creators fear it because of the revenue they make from bundling. A cable channel might make a pittance on each cable subscription but they're making it on every cable subscription.

Content distributors suspect that unbundling will lead to consumers buying less content, only the content they want to watch. That means less revenue for them.

Basically put it out of your mind because it's not going to happen anytime soon.

I agree with Mark's assertion that the industry is suspicious of Google's motives and this will hamper the adoption of Google TV. Google wants to commoditize this and many other markets. In many respects this is good for consumers but effectively destroying the viability of a market by giving it away is the kind of thing that has unintended consequences.

I suspect Apple are far closer to the mark here: people don't want a computer. They just want to watch TV. At some point I can see more and more TV being on-demand.

But there is a schism over pricing that will need to be resolved. Content creators think Apple's rental prices are too low. Empirically, Apple's prices are too high for consumers (eg Amazon pointed out you could buy a TV series for less than you could rent it for from Apple in some cases).

I would love to see a revenue breakdown of a TV show as in how much it makes in advertising (excluding product placement) and then compare that to the potential revenue for renting that same show ad-free. I suspect the rental model is far higher but I suspect the television industry is still entrenched in this idea of selling advertising.