When is a TV screen not a TV screen? Probably when it is a touch-screen computer running an interactive application.
In other words: when it’s an iPad.
Not that a couple million iPads are going to make or break the U.S. cable advertising market. But Viacom has a point to make in suing Time Warner Cable….and now (as reported by paidContent) Cablevision.
There are very major differences between how Cablevision and Time Warner Cable are implementing their iPad applications. And Cablevision probably has a much stronger case than does TWC. But that’s secondary here.
After spending several days last week at The Cable Show 2011, it was hard to miss the companies that were absent (DBS provider, DIRECTV, of course; Verizon; AT&T…as well as Netflix, Roku, Boxee, Google and others…to name a few). On top of this, the TVB was reporting the weakest performance of cable against ADS (namely DBS and IPTV) in 21 years.
But the true undercurrent of the show was that media companies see cable MSOs as simply another distribution channel that may ultimately get replaced. But — for now — the money is good, and things are working well.
And if you’re a media company, you’re looking at multiscreen iPad applications, wondering whether you can do a better job without getting involved with the cable companies.
So. If your business is coax, and we’re talking about getting video to a television set, then you’ve got a job. But if you’re talking about Internet, OTT and multiscreen; that’s not a done deal. And it’s either time to re-negotiate….or go to court.