PRINT THIS PAGE Prime time no more: the television industry struggles against digital distribution upstarts
13/09/2006. Source:Knowledge Wharton.
It's open season on the television industry's business model, says Knowledge Wharton. In recent years, the three pillars of the industry's profits - advertising, regional programming and syndication deals - have come under fire from a band of technology companies, including Sling Media, TiVo, Orb Networks and Apple Computer, that are rewriting the content distribution rules. As Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach notes, TV won't necessarily be viewed via TV anymore.
"Over the next decade, the idea of video content being limited to a single time and device will become quaint," says Werbach. "Broadcasting, as we know it, is an artifact of historical limitations on distribution, which are increasingly irrelevant in the digital broadband age."
The only real question for Werbach is how quickly the transition will occur as technology shifts the place and time that television is viewed.
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Knowledge@Wharton is a bi-weekly online resource that offers the business insights, information and research from a variety of sources. These include analysis of current business trends, interviews with industry leaders and Wharton faculty, plus articles based on the most recent business research, book review and conference and seminar reports.
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