A note from a reader in the consumer electronics industry who begs to differ, at least a little, with the "cable TV decline" hypothesis:
The classic home entertainment in a recession seems to be playing out so far. FPTV prices actually went up after the super bowl and it turns out … that the Best Buy’s of the world jacked prices on low end BD players as they were running low on stock over the holidays – the CE OEMs underestimated demand. If this hangs on who knows, but so far it is playing out this way.
Also, to your cancelling cable post:
A) only in the US (no one else has much legal access)
B) Hulu is clamping way down and been losing some shows – the studios
are going to kill their one good idea again
C) these are still miniscule fractions of the cable audiencesAn example: Dollhouse is a new show from Joss Wheden (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, etc. – huge cult following). Didn’t even hit 5M viewers on its pilot night, and 5M is the bottom cut-off for anything to even vaguely payout on TV, but was considered a smash hit online with 50,000 viewers. Online is coming, but it’s still us silly bleeding edge folks – even for the 12-18 crowd (who can’t seem to watch more than 5-10 minutes of anything anyways).
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