Industry Perspectives: The Transformation of Television on the Internet

Consumers will experience a degree of choice and control that matches the world of television content with that of the Web—the ranges of interest will be as broad and deep as the text Web, and the methods of discovering, sharing, and controlling their experience will be as powerful as the PC and Web allow.

This will be a world where content can flow freely over the open Internet, in a manner that is geographically—and thus carrier and operator—independent. In much the same way a consumer finds and uses any Web site, at any end-point in the world, they will discover, use, and self-program video and television across the vast ocean that is the Internet, unfettered by walled gardens and closed networks. Just as consumers flocked to the Internet despite the hiccups of dial-up modems and clunky Web pages, they will flock to this new medium that empowers them in ways that no single company or industry can replicate.

Consumers will come to forget that their relationship to video programming used to be mediated by a black-box connected to their TV set, and instead will enjoy the same degree of freedom that they have in consuming and using the text Web from any personal computer or device that is compatible with the open protocols, formats, and media of the Internet. This will rapidly extend to CE and PC-based devices connected to TVs and monitors, and over open broadband pipes, enabling two-foot and ten-foot content experiences.

Internet TV distribution also will be characterized by totally different approaches to reaching and engaging an audience—from negotiating complex channel carriage agreements to a model that enables global distribution in an organic and network-based distribution model leveraging search, social networks, and innovative new approaches to affiliation and syndication of content.

Most importantly, the massive economies of scale and reach that the Internet already provides will extend to the realm of video production, where producing and self-distributing a video program is nearly as effortless as producing a Web site, and where millions of new producers and programmers are born. The powerful and irreversible entrepreneurial energy that has built the Internet over the past decade will flow into a new generation of Internet TV entrepreneurs seeking to build the next big thing in global media.