Only Messi Can Save Us Now

What's wrong with this picture? It's 2012, cheap broadband is ubiquitous in the developed world, and TV still isn't dead. In fact it's thriving. Sure, for the first time ever, Nielsen says more people watch videos on the Internet than on a TV--albeit barely--but if you look at how much time is spent on the two, there's no comparison: TV utterly dominates. Which explains why, again according to Nielsen, more money is spent on TV advertising than all other ad platforms combined. A few doomsayers say the TV industry "may be starting to collapse" and that excessive production costs are its weak spot. Yeah, if only. Television as constituted today makes no sense at all; it's a kludged-up legacy system that's enormously painful and expensive to maintain. But TV's entrenched economic interests and cultural inertia are so pathological that even HBO GO wouldn't make sense as a standalone app--as HBO confirms--and the rumors of a brand-new Apple TV ecosystem were, alas, dead wrong. Sure, YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu are mighty powers in their own right, but if even nigh-omnipotent Apple has given up, what hope do they have? Funny you should ask. I just happen to have an answer.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CM5p_CpDSEA/

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