Why TV Lost

March 2009

About twenty years ago people noticed computers and TV were on a
collision course and started to speculate about what they'd produce
when they converged. We now know the answer: computers. It's clear
now that even by using the word "convergence" we were giving TV too
much credit. This won't be convergence so much as replacement.
People may still watch things they call "TV shows," but they'll
watch them mostly on computers.

What decided the contest for computers? Four forces, three of which
one could have predicted, and one that would have been harder to.

One predictable cause of victory is that the Internet is an open
platform. Anyone can build whatever they want on it, and the market
picks the winners. So innovation happens at hacker speeds instead
of big company speeds.

The second is Moore's Law, which has worked its usual magic on
Internet bandwidth.
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