"Ever hear the old saying, “Information wants to be free?” Well, here’s a corollary for you: “TV wants to be à la carte.”
Take the story of the iTunes store. The instant somebody offered the
chance to buy songs individually, the world changed forever. Hello,
music à la carte. Goodbye, Tower Records.
Now it’s cable TV’s turn.
We are engaged in a great civil movement, testing whether that business,
or any business so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. The
number of people who cut the cord, or cancel the satellite, in favor of
getting all their TV from the Internet is still small — maybe 1 percent
of us a year. But the online alternatives to cable TV are growing. And
once it becomes simple and easy to get Internet video from our laptops
and phones to the actual television, well, the term “TV drama” will have
a whole new meaning.
Actually, that has just happened. Google’s new Chromecast gizmo is the
smallest, cheapest, simplest way yet to add Internet to your TV. It
looks like a portly flash drive or maybe a fat keychain — and it costs
$35. That’s not a typo."
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