Microsoft Exec Warns: TV Faces an “iTunes Moment”
12:21 pm, August 31st, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
If the TV industry doesn’t invent a digital business that customers want, it risks an “iTunes moment,” when Apple took hold of the online music business, a Microsoft exec said.
“Realistically. I think the industry has about two to three years to adapt or face its iTunes moment. And it will take at least that long for media brands to build credible, truly digital brands,” Ashley Highfield, managing director of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, told the Guardian.
Highfield gave the gloom and doom prediction today as the keynote speaker at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.
Answering the inevitable question of how to make money from these new ventures, he said “media companies need to embrace controversial targeted advertising techniques, such as behavioral targeting based on users’ web viewing habits, with the ad inventory going into an auction-style model similar to the system Google operates.”
Interesting he didn’t name Apple TV — speculated “dead” as Sony and Microsoft entered the market last year — as a specific threat, but spoke of the success of iTunes.
In 2007, a Forrester analyst said both iTunes and Apple TV were “dead ends” that would be “eclipsed by television and cable networks will quickly shift their content to free ad-supported streaming.”
Ha. I tried out Apple TV for about a week while house sitting this summer. The interface was nice, the remote control cool. I’d still rather keep the cheapo PVR with a slightly wheezy fan a friend rigged up — because, while it’s an ugly little box and the remote control works about 40% of the time, there’s no DRM.
Via the Guardian
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in AppleTV, iTunes | Comment on this article
iTunes moment… thats a good one. Can’t wait for it to happen. Cable companies deserve it!
chip, on August 31st, 2009 at 1:38 pm
[...] Microsoft Exec Warns: TV Faces an “iTunes Moment” | Cult of Mac http://www.cultofmac.com/microsoft-exec-warns-tv-faces-an-itunes-moment/15334 – view page – cached If the TV industry doesn’t invent a digital business that customers want, it risks an “iTunes moment,” when Apple took hold of the online music business, a Microsoft exec said. — From the page [...]
Twitter Trackbacks for Microsoft Exec Warns: TV Faces an “iTunes Moment” | Cult of Mac [cultofmac.com] on Topsy.com, on August 31st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Apple could completely destroy the cable TV business model right now, by creating a subscription model for TV shows on iTunes, where for so much per month you can watch as much as you want, but the files are only good as long as you keep paying.
DRM is largely irrelevant because, most of the time, you’re not going to watch it again anyway. You’d just delete them after watching.
I can’t imagine keeping my cable service if they did this.
Jeremy, on August 31st, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Too late.
gimpymw, on August 31st, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I don’t get why that is a negative?
Aren’t Apple now the biggest retailer of music? Online at least.
And hasn’t the ease of use of the iTunes store, even when DRM was on the tracks made it less likely for non-techie people to use file sharing?
I say bring on the iTunes TV revolution.
pmoes, on August 31st, 2009 at 3:32 pm
itunes doesn’t need to go subscription. hulu etc have that in the bag. have them get full ‘airing’ rights and create a system where for free you have to put up with ads or for a low cost each month you get ad free viewing. all Apple would need is to make the apple tv hulu/netflix/etc friendly.
Charli, on August 31st, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Hulu sort of have it almost in the bag for when you can do streaming and don’t care about the marginal quality and slim selection. They most certainly don’t have the big IT in the big BAG.
Jeremy, on August 31st, 2009 at 9:38 pm
> I’d still rather keep the cheapo PVR
She said / she said / you don’t know shit / because you’ve never been there / she turned upon him / took him by the hair
Kill Your Television
I watch DVDs and iTunes video on a 24 inch iMac. The smartest move I ever made. PVRs are great, but disconnecting that constant stream of programming–almost all of it crap–is the best thing you can do…and I don’t even have access to Hulu, because I’m a Soviet Canuckistan.
I don’t know why people still even think about the 500 channel universe. I live in a one channel universe and it’s great: it always shows stuff I want to see.
Darcy McGee, on September 1st, 2009 at 7:48 am
Darcy — I’m out of Hulu range myself, so the PVR is hooked up to my home network, it’s the same as yours — it only shows stuff I want to see.
Nicole Martinelli, on September 1st, 2009 at 8:11 am