Time/Warner, iPads, HGTV & Streaming Video's Future

Limitless television

In a rather small article in the weekend's FT (which has a paywall and so I can't link), Time Warner, the cable giant, is in a dispute with HGTV, among other, over Time Warner's streaming of television content over an iPad app.

The app allows iPad owners to stream Time/Warner cable content on their iPads (as opposed to TV sets), but only in their homes.

HGTV, among a host of other cable channels, have brought a suit to stop the app, saying that the content is theirs and not Time/Warner's to stream.

Who owns the rights to the content? Time Warner and the other cable companies or HGTV and the other networks.

Interesting.... up to a point.

What is more interesting is what this step forward says about distribution of video in general.

What gives companies like Time/Warner or HGTV their leverage is that they own one of the few access points or choke points to getting content into your house.

Time Warner owned the cable (or owns the cable) and so only what Time/Warner decides you will see do you get to see.

HGTV (and the others) own the network platforms, so even before Time/Warner can decide what you get to see, the executives at HGTV get a first pass.

By the time the content gets to you, it has been filtered many times.

The iPads and the apps change everything.

Time Warner may now blow their content through the iPad or HGTV may blow their content through the iPad, but you know what? So can you.

So can anyone.

Really, without realizing it, the greatest barrier to access - the reason you pay $150+ a month to your cable company, has vanished.

Funny, that.

If Time/Warner can build an app to stream their video (or rather HGTV's video), well, then so can you... or anyone else.

This is going to do to conventional TV and cable companies content what the web did to newspapers.

Kill them.

But it does open the door to everyone else.