Submitted by acohill on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 11:15
The old TV empires are crumbling fast, and Netflix is speeding their demise. It just outbid all the other networks for a new original, uh, "TV" series called , which will star Kevin Spacey. Since you can watch Netflix on just about any device on the planet, there is even less reason to keep around one of those old timey television doohickeys. All they are really good for is as a large screen for your iPad 2, which does a great job of streaming live Netflix content in HD to them. More seriously, the big losers in all this are the cable companies. While Comcast furiously tries to close the barn door after the horses all bolted ages ago by trying to block Netflix, it will shortly become apparent even to cable TV execs that no one really needs them any more, unless the cable TV folks wake up and smell the coffee. And that rich aroma is open access. If the cable companies simply switched to being a massive pipe available to any service provider, including Netflix, they could quickly make enough money to pay off their massive debts. But I'm not betting that their olfactory senses are still working.