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The Business of Production

Is “Fighting Off the Future” a legitimate business goal?

It seems that Variety thinks so, at least when talking about “pay TV”.

I think the implicit attitude in this Variety article, 2012: The year pay TV fought off the future, reveals just how ill prepared the current established pay TV business is for the inevitable disruption. Variety proclaims:

But despite the fragility of their delicate bond, programmers and distributors didn’t face any real challenge in 2012 from any of the expected upstarts hoping to gain rights to live TV and package it in more innovative ways.

If anything, the content companies demonstrated an increasing savvy in capitalizing on digital challengers. And what little damage the old guard sustained on new platforms seemed more self-inflicted than the result of any outside threat.

Right, there are no threats, the established industry is doing just fine, and we’re going to adapt and lead the future, because nothing dramatic happened in 2012! It’s a fairly long article, and I’m sorry if you get frustrated by Variety’s paywall, but it is worth reading to get an insight how the trade’s own rag thinks the business is going.

Frankly if I were Variety, I’d be more worried about my own future disruption.

Ironically, reading the article through, it makes good points showing where the disruption will come from.

4 replies on “Is “Fighting Off the Future” a legitimate business goal?”

I for one, and I know more and more people who are ditching cable TV for configurations similar to mine. I have an Apple TV, with Netflix and Hulu Plus on it, plus a digital TV antenna for local channels. I also bumped up my Internet connection package to a higher bandwidth, which does cost me extra. But the total cost of my annual (I have this all in a spread sheet) TV service is now $1,000.00 lower than it was when I was paying for HD cable every month. And I do NOT miss the times I’d sit and channel surf mindlessly. I am more productive with my life, watch only what I “plan” to watch, and save a grad every year now. And it is not a very difficult setup to install and configure, anyone can do it easily. I wonder how this approach will catch on over the next couple of years?

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