Can Television “Want” Anything?

by Daniel Taylor on 10 March, 2010

It’s hard to understand the rhetoric that ascribes human traits to a medium, but writers continue to make assertions about the things that “television” and, more broadly, “video” “want.” The most recent offender is an op-ed piece in the New York Times that asserts that “Television Is Not Free and Does Not Want to Be.” Of course, after clarifying their own inherent bias on the topic of à la carte media pricing, the question the Times should be asking is whether consumers still want to pay for television.

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Motorola’s assertion that success in the cable set top box business can be leveraged into success in the smartphone market doesn’t make sense.

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