Death of TV: Part XXV -- Warner Bros. renting movies via Facebook

Does anyone watch TV any more? Now that Charlie Sheen (...Winning!) has caused the cancellation of Two and a Half Men, the world as we know has come to an end. Just for the record, I have never watched a single minute of that show, but others obviously have. As I have noted in the past, content is king, so content owners will remain standing after content distributors and their analog world business models have collapsed (read TV channels here). The Internet and the iPod killed the music distribution business. The Internet and devices like the iPad and the Kindle are busy killing the book distribution business, and the Internet and the home computer are busy killing video stores and movie theaters.

Warner Brothers are now renting movies on Facebook for three bucks. That beats going to the movies. And it remains to be seen if this play will affect Netflix much. It really depends on what movies Warner Bros. offers (new releases, older movies, etc.) and whether they release some or all of them to Netflix.

Warner Bros. is probably trying to get more money directly from consumers rather than smaller amounts from the iTunes store and ventures like Netflix. But I'm inclined to think most of these "direct to the buyer" trials will fail, as competitors like iTunes and Netflix offer movie watchers a better browsing experience with more variety.