Craig Birkmaier wrote: >> "The ability to push consumers"?? What, like consumers must >> be gellyfish? Bob explained to you that he was on the verge >> of de-tethering himself. It is the congloms and MVPD >> companies that will have to adapt to consumers, not vice >> versa. > > Correct. > > I'm glad you finally get it. > > Less than 15% depend on OTA TV and most of the rest have > stopped watching the networks (or at least cut back > substantially). OTA goes first. Since everything has to be spelled out, let me try again, more slowly this time. First of all, you are, for some reason, assuming that OTA TV must consist of only certain program streams. Wrong. What is transmitted as untethered OTA TV is entirely up to the congloms and to the OTA broadcasters. The other thing is, you are thinking like it's still 1980. It's not, Craig. Consumers may have made a scramble to MVPDs and off OTA TV back then, but if valuable TV programs continue and increase on untethered OTA nets and/or on the Internet, in a mix that the congloms can decide on their own, then your 15 percent figure will go out the window. In the relatively near term, OTA will be good for cheap bandwidth, but only so much choice. Most markets could easily handle 20 streams OTA, with maybe 5 or 6 at least as HD at any given time. The Internet will become congested still, if millions of people in a market use it for all their TV viewing. But over time, that problem will ease. Everything depends on how fast consumers can stop the inertia Bob mentioned, and wehether these consumers "can be pushed," like guess who, or whether they push back. Bert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.