Today I visited the online video aggregator www.clicker.com . The website does an amazing job of pulling content and presenting it in a user friendly way with superb user interface. Options range from Live Tv to watch On demand stuff to movies and what ever your media needs might be. I tried several videos and the quality and was as good watching shows on TV.
I wonder how are the cable companies going to survive, given all the online choices to users (Hulu, Clicker, Fancast and many others). Online sites offer the user the freedom to not only watch free quality content but pay ala carte for shows that might not be available free. The online companies will eventually start charging a subscription fee for premium content either monthly basis, but this is still going to be lower than the $40-$90+ cable fee.
Arguments like cable companies partnering or buying out content providers can allow them to force the medium of distribution to be Cable TV. However, as internet TV and even Mobile TV gets scale, the content owner would want to be where the views are and where Ad revenue gets maximized. Cable companies bundling other services like Internet and phone is spoken as another saving strategy. As TV gets popular on internet and cable and voice get converged into internet connected devices, the bundling will have to go away.
Shorting cable companies looks like a winning trade to me.
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