Devangshu Datta: Broadband kills the TV star

WORM'S EYE VIEW

There was a period in 1997-98 when we didn't have cable. After one of our innumerable shifts, the idiot box stayed in its styrofoamed carton for eight months. It was only once the 1998 world cup happened that normal service was resumed.

At that time, TV was the conduit for me to random sporting events, Kylie Minogue (strictly on mute), the stock ticker and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The better half liked tennis, F-One, news and travel programming.

When relatives dropped in with toddlers in tow, the kids watched Animal Planet and Cartoon Network. Even after we started zapping again, it took a while to return to the social swim. People would insist on dissecting some serial-plot or natter about some interview done by the bald chap on BBC. And I would stammer.

Looking back, 1998 may well have been the heyday of Indian cable. The market was growing at warp-speed. There was a peculiar mixture of good, bad and awesomely bad programming available.

Cable faced no competition in terms of home entertainment, circa 1998. Streaming video on broadband was a joke; Indians hit the Net through cranky, terrifyingly expensive VSNL dialups.

The state-of-the-art OS, Windows 98, wasn't exactly an ideal multimedia platform; there were no DVD libraries, combo drives, USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports. There was no Napster, Bit Torrent or Tivo.

Since January, we haven't had cable again. Neither of us has bothered calling the cable-wallah after our latest shift.

Thinking back, we haven't watched TV "" barring live sports "" since 2003, which was when we installed broadband and upgraded our multimedia capabilities. Since then, it's been DVDs for movies and concerts, and news and views aggregated off the Net.

But this time I don't feel out of the swim at social dos. Anything worth watching on TV is available in some alternate, more convenient format. Movie DVDs can be rented within a couple of days of the release.

Footage of soccer, F-1, tennis, cricket and golf can generally be found, even realtime off pay-per-view. So can music video downloads and ad-stripped serial episodes courtesy Tivo and Bit Torrent.

When toddlers arrive, their kindly uncle offers them an interactive gaming experience instead of Cartoon Network. As a fringe benefit, my most painful cousin stopped visiting after her five-year-old son waxed eloquent about the "pretty leddy" he met via Tomb Raider.

It may be a double whammy for the channels. The programming has got more vapid even as the consumer has found alternate avenues of entertainment.

Given a choice of formats and flexi-time, people only watch what they want to watch, when they have time to spare. As couples go, we're probably a little ahead of the curve. But as broadband penetration grows and digital convergence improves, the shift will be sharply defined.

There are interesting revenue implications. Digital convergence could kill the ad-revenue model. If option A is a stripped-down 45 minutes serial episode, which can be frozen, fast-forwarded and watched at convenience, would you really prefer option B, a full 60 minutes with ads thrown in?

Globally, networks are also discovering that staggered episode release schedules don't work. British viewers use Tivo and Bit Torrent to catch up with ad-stripped US serial episodes instantly rather than wait six months for official broadcasts.

As for pay-per-view, it is not very difficult to set up a wireless network plus dish that streams TV cable-feed through an apartment building. The network economics will soon make this less expensive than multiple individual subscriptions.

Every new intelligent building could thus be another nail in the coffin, unless the pay-per-view model reinvents itself.

Don't get me wrong. Cable is still growing and it will continue to grow. People have a great appetite for garbage laced with ads. Broadband is still in its infancy, so even news-feeds are more conveniently accessed through cable.

But key viewership, the SEC A high-income group, will move away faster than anyone realises. The cable industry, as it's currently defined, could actually be just a few years away from extinction.