The new generation of tollbooths

Dan Frommer is 27 years old and works as a writer for a technology Web site. Frommer pulled the plug on cable TV in May 2008 and instead gets shows from the Internet via a Macintosh computer hooked to his LCD television. He can’t get everything he’d like to see, but he’s saved $1,500 on cable-TV fees. “I’m not going to let myself get ripped off for a bunch of garbage that I don’t watch anyway,” he says. Many of his 20-something friends have also pulled the plug. The next generation—today’s teenagers—will likely never sign up for cable TV at all.

This is dreadful news for cable companies. For decades they’ve had a glorious business model, running the tollbooth that stood between you and the shows. Now the Internet provides a way to get around that tollbooth, and cable companies are faced with a dilemma: do they embrace the Internet and try to make money online, or do they fight the Internet and try to hold off the destruction? The answer is to do both—holding off the rising tide with one hand while racing to devise workable Internet business models with the other. 

- Lyons, explaining the Comcast-NBC deal (via newsweek) (via mikehudack) (via xxxjustinralconxxx) (via evangotlib)

That’s kinda funny. It’s not that now there is no more tollbooth. On the internet it’s other tollbooths - and for better of worse, they’re also technology companies, like Apple, Amazon, Roku, etc. Distribution is still key.