Why We Want TV to Be Disrupted So Badly

Time.com wants TV to be disrupted:

It seems as though the promise of a better television experience easily excites the tech media. I frequently talk to many in the tech press about this topic and I find it fascinating that so many people want the TV experience to be disrupted so badly. It’s as though there’s an air of desperation for TV to be reborn. The question is why?

When I joined my firm Creative Strategies in 2000 to do market research, my first area of focus was on the digital home. I spent many man hours researching the market for HDTVs and the enabling of technologies like home networking and streaming media from PCs to TVs. Around that time, two interesting companies hit the scene: ReplayTV and TiVo.

I was at the Consumer Electronics Show where both companies debuted, and their booths were as packed as any on the show floor. Both offered such a simple premise: pause, rewind and fast forward live TV. In my opinion, these two companies paved the way for the disruption we will eventually see. Why? Because they showed us how much better our TV experience could be, and how crappy the technology was that our current television providers provided us with.