Phones are boring. So are tablets, and laptops, and every other traditional form of computer. All the leading models offer (roughly) comparable experiences. Progress is measured in inches, or millimeters. Technology companies have left one screen relatively untouched, though: television.
Judged by the standards we apply to any other kind of information technology, watching broadcast and cable television is a terrible experience. Googling “Don Draper” to fill a computer screen with smoldering images of Jon Hamm is almost faster than instantaneous; it can even be shouted into the latest version of Google, whether you’re using a phone or a decade-old computer. Doing the same with a television requires figuring out which button on a remote control opens up the creaky DVR software from your cable provider, or, worse, the rustic cable guide, so that you can scroll through hundreds of possible channels to find AMC in high definition at the correct time.
It’s nearly taken for granted, in fact, that the Internet and technology companies will completely transform traditional television or supplant it one day—probably fairly soon. As the rapper Wale said in the recent song “Gullible,” “TV killed the radio / And then the Internet slit the television throat.” Apple, Microsoft, Google, and even Intel seem to have plans that they think will utterly transform the experience of watching television.
But, so far at least, Silicon Valley has made little headway. Ninety-five per cent of American households with televisions still watch TV from a cable or satellite company; just five million households have given up cable, according to Nielsen. An Apple TV or Xbox 360 remains a secondary access point for Netflix, HBO Go, or the occasional rented movie. And while Microsoft has sold seventy-seven million Xbox 360 consoles, Apple has sold just thirteen million Apple TVs, and Google TV is widely considered a failure. (Google’s other television product, the Nexus Q, was aborted before its official launch.)
This lack of progress is by design—the design of the cable companies, who distribute the content that Apple, Google, and Microsoft need to access in order to remake television. The companies that make the content, like HBO, or ESPN, or NBC, are largely, and increasingly, fine with Silicon Valley paying them for their work. But the cable companies aren’t thrilled about being supplanted and have been working to maintain as much control as possible. Last month, Bloomberg detailed how Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable provider in the United States, has over three hundred contracts for content, “and some of them may bar media outlets from providing content to online pay-TV services,” like those that Intel and Google want to build, which would transmit content over broadband Internet. Under these arrangements, some programmers, in order to have their content shown on Time Warner Cable, would not be able to license their content to, say, Google’s TV service, too. The C.F.O. of Charter, the fourth-largest American cable company, has explicitly stated, “It’s in everybody’s mutual interest that we are protecting the ecosystem in a way that continues to keep the value of that programming that we have and the way it’s delivered to our subscribers today.” What cables companies are afraid of is becoming dumb, indiscriminate pipes for other firms’ content, which would be their eventual fate if the same content they offered, particularly live TV, were easily accessible online. Quite simply, people would cancel their expensive cable subscriptions. There’s far more money in being the gatekeepers, which is how the cable-television model functions now. (Wireless carriers offer a useful counter-illustration: they had similar fears before the launch of the iPhone, and also pursued a general strategy of restriction. It failed, but now AT&T and Verizon make more money than ever.)
There are signs, though, that the inevitable is starting to happen, albeit slowly. While cable-cutting remains a niche phenomenon, it is becoming more and more common, and, as one might imagine, it is driven largely by younger viewers who are uninterested in traditional cable. Falling prime-time ratings tell the broader story: if networks and studios want to reach viewers, they’ll need to mold the delivery of their content to fit evolving viewing practices. And the biggest programmers, like NBCUniversal and Viacom, too big to be locked into overly restrictive contracts with cable companies, are mostly happy to oblige. provided that web TV providers pay the price they’re demanding for that content. A TV service from Intel, rumored to be named OnCue, is designed to replicate all of the content of a traditional cable package—including live TV—with on-demand programming and a new kind of interface. Google is freshly rumored to be pursuing the same kind of deals in order to “stream traditional TV programming” across the Internet. Google, however, has sought these kinds of deals before and failed, so there’s no guarantee the company will succeed this time.
While Google and Intel’s latest efforts appear to involve working directly with the companies that make content, and thus possibly running around the cable companies, Apple and Microsoft seem to have chosen to work with the cable providers. The former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin reported on Monday that Apple “wants to strike deals with cable companies like Time Warner Cable to allow cable subscribers to watch television using an Apple device,” and that it is also talking to the networks about a feature “that would allow users to skip ads.” In May, Microsoft revealed that viewers will be able to use their Xbox Ones to watch cable television; the console connects to existing cable boxes and replaces their usual interfaces with one designed by Microsoft. While the Xbox One doesn’t replace the traditional cable model—or even the box—it does offer what is, so far, one of the better tastes of a new kind of television experience, combining cable, on-demand video content, gaming, video chat, and other apps with an attractive interface powered by speech and gestures. While Apple and Microsoft’s TV experiences may be hamstrung in part by their reliance on cable companies, their approaches represent possibly the fastest ways to move television forward, in much the same way Apple partnered with AT&T to produce the first iPhone.
The endgame for Apple, Google, and Microsoft is to lock in their customers as completely as possible: buy an Apple phone, an Apple tablet, an Apple computer, and an Apple television, and watch how seamlessly they all work together. Right now, none of these companies can claim to provide a truly comprehensive television experience, certainly not one that connects back to their other devices. But they are moving in that direction, and, fortunately for them, being locked in is what most of their customers want.
Illustration by Pierre di Sciullo.
