In today's Sunday New York Times, a two thousand word feature by Lorne Manly and John Markoff takes the gloves off. Link - login requried

EXCERPT: "Not surprisingly, the repercussions - particularly the rapidly growing number of shows available for the plucking online - terrify industry executives, who remember only too well what Napster and other file-sharing programs did to the music industry. They fret that if unchecked, rampant trading of files will threaten the riches of the relatively new and surprisingly lucrative television DVD business. It could endanger sales of television shows to international markets and into syndication. And it could further endanger what for the past 50 years has been television's economic linchpin: the 30-second commercial.

"We have to try as an industry to get ahead of this and give the audience an attractive model before the illegal file-sharer providers meet their needs," said David F. Poltrack, CBS Television's executive vice president for research and planning.

The the phrase 'terrify industry executives' may be true - but you'd never be able to tell it from the way networks interact with both new technology partners and content creators. It seems like TV is going down the same track as Music - ignore, lobby washington (broadcast flag) and then sue. But as the times accuratly points out - people aren't pirating video because they want to break the law, it's because the clear demand for flexible (non-linear) viewing, and new platforms (phones, portable devices, etc) are being put on the back burner.

In many ways TV networks aren't nearly as concerned about the trends as advertisers - the talk about the end of the :30 commerical is a major topic of conversation at both clients and agencies.

Perhaps most interesting in the Times piece is the CBS research that says that viewers would gladly pay $1 to view a show they like - when they want to see it. Let's say it out loud: Networks exist to provide access to audience. They sell that audience to advertisers - who interupt programs with commericals. Now - audiences are abandoning networks and think of programs as distinct and purchasable on demand. But once we're paying for shows - we'll be a whole less likely to be willing to have them interupted. So the whole economy of TV is under attack. And the Tivo numbers (actually DVR numbers) bear that out.

- from the Times article:
"It all started with the digital video recorder. First popularized by TiVo and ReplayTV about five years ago, the DVR gave consumers a new degree of control: instead of being at the mercy of the broadcast schedule or VCR's, they could now be their own television programmers, scheduling shows at their convenience, pausing live television and skipping easily past commercials. Smith Barney estimates that though only a little more than 6 million Americans now use DVR's, by 2010 nearly half of American television households, or 58 million homes, will have them."

Worth noting that post CES, the blinders seem to have come off. The moment to re-invent television has arrived. Now it's time to place some bets on who wins:

1. Cable
2. Phone Companies
3. IPTV (broadband)
4. Tivo
5. Microsoft
6. Apple
7. Real Networks
8. Linux / open sources
9. Some combo of above

Anyone?