Mark Cuban shares some interesting thoughts at his blog on why the Internet is not disrupting TV:

If my memory serves me right, the common thread among industries (disrupted by the Internet) is that they all sold their products ala carte.

Music – By the CD

Newspapers – Single Newspaper (Dallas Morning News) sold by copy or subscription

Magazine – Single Magazine (Newsweek) sold by copy or subscription

DVDs – Single copy.

Blockbuster – Rent each DVD

In each of the above examples, the primary revenue stream from the product came from ala carte sales – the purchase of a single product.

Cuban goes on to compare this to TV:

TV is sold by aggregators who sell TV in bundles. Not ala carte.

Pick any TV distributor. They aggregate the channels they want to sell into bundles and sell them. From basic service to full service with every channel available. If you want to buy PPV or VOD content, you must first be a subscriber.

Look at Netflix. They sell NOTHING ala carte (like I said, smart as shit). You have to subscribe to their service, then you can select the content you want to watch.

Look at Spotify. Pay by the month or don’t play.

Cuban’s argument makes sense. It’s will be hard for devices like Apple TV and Google TV to disrupt traditional television when many traditional TV sources won’t make themselves available on the devices.

Cuban fails to take into account, though, the broader trend away from static, sit-back content towards new media that is more social and interactive. People are already dumping cable because they’re spending their time watching Internet TV – or using the Internet to do something more active with their time.

If Apple and Google try to compete against television, they’ll never win, because they’ll only have a fraction of the content to offer.

If they look at television as part of a broader variety of Internet activities that can be delivered to your living room, though, they can become the super-aggregators that Cuban is talking about – delivering Internet video, social media activities, video calling, games and, yes, television shows to your big screen.

Can Apple TV and Google TV compete with traditional TV? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Media Research firm Say Media reports that one out of three people in the US has given up watching live TV for Internet TV and time-shifted video.

Consumers are spending less time with live television and more time with online content as well as time-and-device-shifted premium video content. This group is young, educated and affluent – and are increasingly difficult for marketers to reach through traditional broadcast media.

The researchers identify two groups among those giving up on live TV:

On Demanders

• Watch less live TV than a year ago and more streamed video content
• Are young, educated, affluent
• Own 5.4 devices for streaming video
• Consume 30 hours of video content weekly
• Are least receptive to TV, online and mobile ads

Opt Outs

• Do not watch live TV
• Are younger (30% are 18-24), live in urban areas
• Get their video content time and device shifted
• Own 3.9 devices for streaming video
• Are most receptive to mobile and online ads

New media is moving beyond the first-adopters to the mainstream. And – as better Internet TV devices become available – this trend is only going to accelerate.

Have you given up watching live TV?

It looks like the other shoe has dropped for old media.

New research shows that people are abandoning old media by the millions for Internet media. And if they aren’t abandoning it, they are cutting way back on the time the spend with it.

First of all, there’s bad news for cable:

• In a survey of 2,500 consumers, 7 percent said they had stopped using basic cable service;
• 12 percent reported cutting their premium cable or satellite services.
• When asked about their expectations for next year, 21 percent of households in the under $50,000 bracket said they’d cancel their basic cable next year.

The trends are just as bad for radio:

• Young people have cut their radio use in half in the last decade. In 2000, 12-24 year olds spent an average of 2 hours and 43 minutes a day listening to radio. This has dropped to just 1 hour and 24 minutes.
• 3 times as many young people are listening to Pandora radio as listen to traditional radio broadcasts via the Internet.
• Young people spend twice as much time on the Internet now as they do listening to radio.

While these are positive trends for anyone interested in new media, numbers like these are going to mean even more disruption for traditional media.

What do you think? Are cable and radio’s days numbered?

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Google today offered an update on Google TV – its new Internet television platform. And while Apple has been content to keep Apple TV as a “hobby”, Google is intent on making its Internet TV receiver a business.

Today they announced multiple content partners for Google TV:

• Turner Broadcasting has been optimizing some of their most popular websites for viewing on Google TV, including TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim.
• NBC Universal has collaborated with Google TV to bring CNBC Real-Time, an application that allows you to track stocks and access news feeds while watching financial news.
• HBO will bring access to hundreds of hours of programming to Google TV with HBO GO.
• NBA has built NBA Game Time, an application that lets you follow game scores in real-time and catch up on the latest highlights from your favorite team in HD
• Amazon Video On Demand offers access to over 75,000 titles for rental or purchase
• Netflix will offer the ability to instantly watch movies and TV shows.

Other Google TV partners include USA Today, Pandora, Napster & Twitter.

While Apple’s recently announced Apple TV update will make the platform cheap to try and easy to use, Google TV is leapfrogging it and looks like it will be the first company to establish an Internet TV platform that’s open to developers.

While its too early to tell if Google will turn Internet TV into more than a “hobby”, by focusing on creating a developer-friendly platform, it’s moving in the right direction.

What do you think? Are you going to get a Google TV?

Nielsen has released a new report on video and the Internet, based on input from people in 55 countries, and has found that most people, around the world, are now watching online video. Furthermore, interest in Internet-ready TVs is now at 20%.

“The research reveals how connected consumers all over the world are expanding their video experience across screens,” says Nielsen’s Matt O’Grady.

Key Findings

• Online Video: approximately 70% of global online consumers watch online video; but North Americans and Europeans lag in adoption. More than half of global online consumers watch online video in the workplace.
• Mobile Video: is already used by 11% of global online consumers: penetration is highest in Asia-Pacific and among consumers in their late 20s.
• Tablet PCs: are expanding the definition of mobile video. Globally, 11% of online consumers already own or plan to purchase a tablet PC (such as an iPad) in the next year.
• Television: is a universally important platform for video consumption, with connected consumers in many markets spending 4+ hours per day watching television.
• HDTV (High-Definition TV): is improving the TV viewing experience for as many as 30% of global online consumers. Adoption is highest among older consumers and in North America, where HD content has proliferated.
• 3DTV (Three-Dimensional TV): will have a small but important audience: 12% of global online consumers own or have definite intent to purchase a 3DTV in the next year.
• “Over the Top” TV: televisions with Internet connections are gaining interest. About one in five (22%) global online consumers owns or has definite interest in buying a television with Internet connection in the next year.

Nielsen’s report also identifies differences in video behavior by region and country:

• Claimed TV viewership is higher than average in the emerging BRIC economies, Brazil, Russia, India and China, and lower than average in many developed European markets
• North America and Europe appear to lag slightly behind other regions in the use of online and mobile video
  Connected consumers in Asia-Pacific are 45 percent more likely to use mobile video than the global average
• Claimed interest for Tablet PCs is highest in MEAP markets: Middle East, Africa and Pakistan. Connected Pakistanis are twice as likely as the global population to say they own or are interested in a Tablet PC.
• Connected Latin American consumers express above average interest in TVs with Internet connections. Online Consumers in Colombia, in particular, are very interested in acquiring this technology.

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Google today published this YouTube video that explains “What is Google TV?”

It doesn’t offer new info, but the video does help position the Google TV solution.

With Google TV, it looks like Google is trying to fork the Web, like the Apple iPad forks the Web – creating a new platform for Interacting with the Internet vs the Web.

What do you think about Google TV and its potential?

Internet video – content stored and distributed over an IP architecture — will eclipse the consumption of broadcast TV by 2020, according to research from The Diffusion Group (TDG).

According to TDG data, while the amount of time spent viewing TV has remained relatively stable, the amount of time consumers spent watching online video increased 84% between 2008 and 2009. When extrapolated across the entire TV-viewing population, the average time spent viewing online video in 2009 was 52% more than in 2008.

TDG expects that this rate of growth will actually increase during the next 5-7 years due primarily to the increased use of the television as the platform of choice for web video viewing.

“The total amount of time spent watching video from all sources, including PayTV and Internet video, will hold constant during the next 10 years at around 32 hours a week,” xccording to TDG’s Colin Dixon. “With online video usage accelerating, we expect the amount of Internet video watched to eclipse the amount of live broadcast TV around 2020.”

Many Americans spend more time watching TV than they do working, according to The Nielsen Company.

According to Nielsen, Americans are watching more and more television -  seven hours a day or more.

Other highlights of Nielsen’s research:

• Online video consumption is up 16% from last year;
• 44% of all online video is being viewed in the workplace; and
• Active mobile video users grew by 57% in the last year.

I’m skeptical about Nielsen’s statistics.

No one I know watches anywhere near 7 hours of television/day.

In fact, with the rise of Internet video, podcasting vlogs, YouTube – most people I know are spending a lot less time with passive media. The people I know are actively choosing the content they engage with, through Internet video, podcasting and social media.

Which means that for Nielsen’s numbers  to be right, a new breed of uber-couch potato that watches TV 14 hours a day must silently be on the rise.

Americans Are Insatiable TV Lovers

Here’s what Nielsen has to say about the trend.

“The initial fear was that Internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalize traditional TV viewing,” according to Nielsen’s Matt O’Grady, “but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different.”

“It seems that, for the foreseeable future at least, America’s love affair with the TV will continue unabashed,” adds O’Grady. “We seem to have an almost insatiable appetite for media, with online and mobile programming only adding to it.”

Sounds almost like they get paid to ask questions that support traditional media ad rates, doesn’t it?

Full stats below. Check them and and let me know if you believe that people are really spending more time watching video than they are working!

Image: videocrab

MediaMemo reports today that Apple is allegedly talking to the TV networks to round up support fr a monthly subscription service that would deliver TV programs via iTunes:

Apple (AAPL) isn’t tying the proposed service to a specific piece of hardware, like its underwhelming Apple TV box or its long-rumored tablet/slate device. Instead, the company is presenting the offer as an extension of its iTunes software and store, which already has 100 million customers.

A so-called “over the top” service could theoretically rival the ones most consumers already buy from cable TV operators–if Apple is able to get enough buy-in from broadcast and cable TV programmers.

While this an interesting rumor – it appears that there’s little more to it than that.

If Apple want to compete with your local cable provider, the way it’s going to have to do it is by opening up Apple TV as a home entertainment platform.

The networks don’t have a lot of incentive to alienate cable providers – so the way forward is to route around the networks and make delivering content to iTunes or Apple TV as easy as changing channels on your television – something it, arguably, has done with the App Store.

Apple today introduced new Apple TV 3.0 software, featuring a redesigned main menu, support for iTunes Extras and iTunes LP, as well as support for listening to Genius Mixes and Internet radio.

While it’s great to see Apple finally update Apple TV, anyone looking for the platform to open up, add an app store or just add support for Hulu, will be disappointed.

After giving the update a quick spin, the main benefits are slightly faster navigation and the Internet radio support.

The new Apple TV software is available immediately free of charge to existing Apple TV owners.

About The Update

The redesigned main menu on Apple TV gives you instant access to your favorite content. Recently rented or purchased movies, as well as other content including TV shows, music, podcasts, photos and YouTube, are accessible directly from the new main menu.

The new software allows Apple TV users to enjoy fullscreen iTunes Extras and iTunes LP.

iTunes Extras gives movie fans great additional content such as deleted scenes, interviews and interactive galleries. iTunes LP is the next evolution of the music album, delivering a rich, immersive experience for select albums on the iTunes Store by combining beautiful design with expanded visual features like live performance videos, lyrics, artwork, liner notes, interviews, photos, album credits and more.

Now Apple TV users can enjoy Genius Mixes through their home theater system and listen to up to 12 endless mixes of songs that go great together, automatically generated from their iTunes library. Customers can also enjoy Internet radio, allowing them to browse and listen to thousands of Internet radio stations, as well as tag favorite stations to listen to later.

Apple TV’s support of HD photos is enhanced with iPhoto Events, which simplifies finding your favorite photos on Apple TV, as well as iPhoto Faces, which gives access to photos organized by people identified in iPhoto.