Quote:
Originally Posted by polak
This isn't 2001.
No company would get to the level of HBO if their leadership couldn't read the very obvious writing on the wall. Blockbuster and HBO are two different beasts. Blockbuster would have had to overhaul their entire business to compete with Netflix and they chose to risk it and stay with the status quo. No doubt a stupid decision but its totally different then a network deciding to keep selling their product (tv shows) to cable companies. It's those cable companies that are the blockbuster in your analogy.
And again, if HBO was as clueless as you seem to think, then HBO GO wouldn't exist.
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HBO GO is used by 1% of the subscribers to HBO.
Note that you do have to subscribe to the HBO cable channel in order to be able to subscribe to and access HBO GO.
And we're not talking about Blockbuster and HBO. We're talking about two companies trying to deliver the same thing. Blockbuster and Netflix. Blockbuster, and a lot of other big players in the media world didn't figure that there was any possible way that a streaming movie service that allowed viewers to subscribe for a low monthly cost would ever be successful. Now Netflix is a billion dollar company and Blockbuster is bankrupt.
The same 'shift' applies to the music industry as well. Spotify, Pandora and Rdio have completely revolutionized the music industry to the point where 'album' sales are down. Why didn't the labels start up their own streaming music service? Why did a private company have to come in and disrupt a rather lucrative industry?
And I left iTunes out for a reason. And Amazon. And Google Music.
It is extremely naive to think that big billion dollar companies cannot be stuck in their ways. Disruption has happened in every industry, and will continue to happen, and my guess is 5-10 years from now, cable TV will be a dying industry, and streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc, etc will control over 75% of the marketshare.
Companies that cannot innovate and keep up with the changing 'media' world are going to die the same death that Blockbuster does, while companies like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Google, Apple and others are going to keep growing like crazy because they clearly see where the future is going.