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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

X Buys Y/Time Warner exiting cable?



That headline continues to be the mantra in the digital world and I wonder is another bubble bursting. So many news stories with the same 3 words with the most recent being Google Buys Doubleclick. How big is big and will they topple or will the FCC be forced to put a stop to it like the split up of AT&T.




Now the story is that Time Warner is willing to spin off its cable systems to buy an internet company. So now I ask which statement is true "Content is King" or "The Pipeline is King". Does it mean that the infrastructure is less important to the future business. Perhaps so, taking a look at what happened to the telephone company and how traditional phone service is treated like a commodity. Hard to differentiate which is better for telephone reception - copper or IP or even cellular. Some homes now don't even have a hard line in their home and use their cell phone exclusively.

Wasn't it less than a year ago that Time Warner wanted to sell AOL; now they may want to strengthen AOL and buy Yahoo and others to add to their empire. Now AOL and their content partners may be the future.

So what does the consumer want. How many different platforms need to house the Time Warner (or NBC or ABC, etc) content for the consumer to find it. How many different sites must we surf to find the stuff we want to read, listen to, and watch. Perhaps we need to customize our own site with windows inside windows to place the channels we want; we simply click to enlarge or click a PIP to see a few larger windows at a time. Frankly, I only need one place to find each content producer's material - I'll copy and embed your channel into my web page. Cuz right now, my favorites/bookmark needs a bookmark!