Love him or hate him, Mark Cuban is always entertaining – to watch and to read.
On his Blog Maverick blog yesterday, Cuban explains (in his less than humble opinion) why online video can never compete with cable or satellite.
The Great Internet Video Lie is that the internet opens distribution to compete with the evil gate keepers, cable and satellite. In reality, if you have a desire to deliver a large number of streams, and you want to compete with another internet video provider to offer a large number of streams, you are not in a very good position. You are at the mercy of 3 or 4 CDNs, the ultimate internet video gatekeepers
Ben Adds: While I agree, online video won’t compete with cable or satellite in terms of reaching a large scale audience at the quality viewers expect from TV, he’s missing or at least disregarding a crucial point. These are different mediums and as such viewers expect and receive different things from them.
Sure, the internet broke down for many on inauguration day from the strain of millions of simultaneous streams, and it cost a boatload for those who offered it, but it also showcased the power of the medium to enable a new method of communication between hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world. TV can’t do that.