The Web is alive with
speculation concerning iPhone 5 and an iPad
Mini,
as well as pending new Kindle Fires from
Amazon
and maybe its first smartphone, along with lingering when-and-how-much
questions about Microsoft's Surface
tablets
and the varying Windows 8 editions and Office 2013, Nintendo's
long-awaited release of the Nintendo Wii U, Sony's PlayStation 4, a Blu-ray equipped Xbox 720, and the now delayed
appearance until early next year of the long-awaited RIM savior BlackBerry 10.
But like asking
everyone not in the room to raise their hands, the rumors about Apple HDTV have
been conspicuous by their absence.
A few months ago, the
interwebs was chock full of "Apple HDTV is coming!" hubbub.
Now? Crickets.
Why? Nothing but my
own fecund imagination is fueling the following fulmination, but I think Apple
has delayed its HDTV because it doesn't want to enter the TV market with just
another "smart" TV.
No, Apple wants to
change how we watch TV the way it changed how we buy music – by offering
individual programs for sale either a la carte or via an all-you-can-watch
subscription. Except Hollywood won't let Apple do what consumers want it to do.
Last March, CBS CEO Les Moonves told a
symposium
how Steve Jobs approached him a year before to sell CBS programming under a
subscription content plan. Moonves turned him down.
Moonves may have been
right in the short term. But the whole studio-to-cable/satellite
provider-to-consumer model is an endangered species; to quote The Crow,
"They're all dead, they just don't know it yet."
From where I sit, an
oncoming train is speeding toward the broadcast TV business model. That train
is a consumer's desire to cherry-pick what they want to watch rather than
paying for things they don't want to watch, with an unnecessary cable/satellite
provider in the middle.
We can already see
this train. Many Hulu, Vudu and Netflix subscribers are watching TV this way. A
couple of months ago, an online petition asking HBO to make its popular
"Game of Thrones" series accessible via its online HBOGO app without
being tied to a cable subscription attracted nearly 170,000 signatures – people
begged HBO to take their money. CNN's Dan Simon provided an excellent report on
why HBO said no
to a standalone Internet HBOGO service.
In brief – HBO didn't
want to rupture relationships with cable providers. But nearly every TV and
cable channel has its own attendant Web site via which consumers can consume
programming, bypassing cable or satellite providers. Viacom tried to shut their
content Web sites down during its recent kerfuffle with DirecTV so satellite subscribers
wouldn't have this alternative access. But Viacom reversed course after a hew
and cry from not only non-DirecTV subscribers but from one of Viacom's own
employees, Jon Stewart.
All of which
illustrates the inexorable move from the current broadcast paradigm to a la
carte or subscription viewing via the Web.
"Cord
cutting" has become a parlor game protest exercise for the technologically
clever, an economic necessity for others. The only thing stopping cord cutting
from becoming a full-blown trend is an organized alternative to cable/satellite
middlemen – such as what Apple wants to provide with its HDTV. But my guess – Apple
won't until it can.
