The Death of Television?

by Steve O'Keefe on November 3, 2010

TVThe Consumer Electronics Association recently released its annual Five Technology Trends to Watch report, and it appears we’ve stopped watching TV.

“TV is, in a way, kind of played out,” says Sean Murphy, a senior account executive at the CEA who writes for the trade association’s Digital Dialogue blog. Murphy is quoted by dealnews editorial director Beth Pinsker, who laments that the CEA’s “core areas of interest are now mostly about mobile technologies and the gizmos that make them work better, and no longer about TVs.”

This year’s five technology trends to watch, according to the CEA, are:

  • Technology and privacy
  • Video distribution and consumption
  • Mobile, 4G devices
  • Environmental issues
  • The apps business

Privacy, or the lack thereof, has been a compelling news story of late. In chapter five of the new book, MINITRENDS, John and Carrie Vanston identify “increased interest in privacy” as one of the trends most suited to entrepreneurial activity, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. Among the other business opportunities resulting from our loss of privacy, the Vanstons cite reputation management:

There will be considerable demand for processes that can remove information from the myriad of databases in which this information may be recorded. Related to this, those offering reputation management services, i.e., tracking an entity’s actions, other entities’ opinions of those actions, and helping the entity manage the results, will be in great demand.

MINITRENDS is a guide to business opportunities that have the promise of profitability in two-to-five years, written by the two of the leading futurists in America. That may seem like a very short time frame, but it’s amazing how things can change quickly. In the CEA report, Deepak Joseph, director of technology and standards at CEA, reflects back on the past five years in streaming video:

In 2006, a host of companies we now closely associate with new video distribution models were not yet founded. Here is a sampling of the current players, Hulu launched March 2007, Netflix streaming service launched January 2007, Apple-TV launched March 2007, Vudu Box launched August 2007, Amazon On-Demand launched July 2008, Yahoo! Connected-TV launched January 2009, YouTube LeanBack launched July 2010 and Google-TV is launching this fall… In 2006, it would have been farfetched to think that 10 million people would view streaming on-demand movies and TV shows, many in HD over their Internet connection on their TVs on a regular basis, yet that is exactly what consumers are doing today with Netflix streaming service.

The same wave of technological change that is making television sets obsolete can also make trade associations obsolete. In the summary essay of CEA’s report, the authors ask whether we are driving technological change, or technology is driving us. As an answer, one need only look at the Consumer Electronics Association itself. The trade organization has seen where its future lies, and is shifting its coverage to mobile devices and online content.

You can access a PDF of the complete report, Five Technology Trends to Watch, at this link.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Five Technology Trends to Watch,” Consumer Electronics Visions, 10/18/10
Source: “CEA’s Top 5 Technology Trends Dismiss TV,” dealnews, 10/20/10
Source: “MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business and Technology Trends,” Technology Futures, Inc., p. 99.
Image by schmilblick, used under its Creative Commons license.

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Comments

One Response to “The Death of Television?”

  1. Broadcast and Cable Networks Battle as Viewers Cut the Cord | Minitrends on November 24th, 2010 6:15 am

    […] month, we noted here that even the Consumer Electronics Association thinks TV is “played out.” We’d love to hear your comments about the future of television and the many services that are […]

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