This may be true from the producer perspective. It's difficult to get your message to millions of people at one time using the Internet.
From the consumer perspective, however -- the internet is the clear winner, if you must choose one. There are millions of streams available at any one time. That's the beauty of it. That's why Internet video will win in the long run or at least be a viable option for the individual over television. If you are willing to sacrifice mainstream content, ditch the TV and go all Internet. I haven't had a TV in over 6 years.
But Mr. Cuban is right, TV will be around for a long time. It will remain the winner for mainstream content, but the Internet isn't about mainstream content it's about access to content that isn't popular enough to warrant distributing to the main streams via traditional wireless routes.
Cuban's point is largely specious--the cost of distribution is high. The Internet doesn't magically make things cheap. Granted.
However what the Internet does do is level the playing field (at least compared to traditional media distribution methods). This means that cranky old white men clutching yesteryear's business models will have their lunch eaten sooner or later.
Even though scalability is an issue, it hasn't been solved because the demand hasn't been high enough yet. How many events have to scale that big? In this case, the long tail of content (meaning anything that needs to scale to more than a million simultaneous views) is the vast majority of content. Hulu doesn't have any trouble streaming the most popular television shows. How many Superbowls and Obama inaugurations actually happen?
Furthermore, the solution for massive scalability already exists. It's called BitTorrent, and Cuban was remiss in not mentioning it. BitTorrent makes scalability a function of total Internet bandwidth. It also transfers the hardware costs to the users (who don't see it as a cost). The bandwidth is still more expensive than television broadcast, but I imagine reaching everyone in the US via television is not exactly cheap either.
I've been TV-free for about 3.5 years, and only had broadcast TV (in Spain) for about a year before that. So the last time I had cable was in 2004.
Sadly the time savings afforded by not having a TV are often eaten up by the Internet nowdays, but at least it requires slightly more activity on my part.
From the consumer perspective, however -- the internet is the clear winner, if you must choose one. There are millions of streams available at any one time. That's the beauty of it. That's why Internet video will win in the long run or at least be a viable option for the individual over television. If you are willing to sacrifice mainstream content, ditch the TV and go all Internet. I haven't had a TV in over 6 years.
But Mr. Cuban is right, TV will be around for a long time. It will remain the winner for mainstream content, but the Internet isn't about mainstream content it's about access to content that isn't popular enough to warrant distributing to the main streams via traditional wireless routes.
Anyone here also TV free? How many years?