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SXSW panel preview: ‘PayTV vs. Internet - The Battle For Your TV’
‘PayTV vs. Internet - The Battle For Your TV’
5 p.m. March 12
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom D
In this corner … Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet, a U.S.television channel broadcast exclusively in high definition and available via satellite and cable. In this corner … Avner Ronen, CEO of Boxee, maker of software that allows you to play videos, music and pictures from your PC or from the Internet on your television.
A year ago, the pair participated in a spirited online debate on content delivery after a digital media blogger posted an interview with Ronen in which the CEO claimed that the shift to online content delivery — allowing consumers to pick and choose what they wanted to view — could spell trouble for cable programmers’ business model of selling content packages. Cuban responded on his own blog with a post entitled, “Why Do Internet People Think Content People Are Stupid ?”
Oh, it’s on.
The tussle continues in a 2010 SXSW Interactive panel Ronen unofficially calls “Big Mouths Clash in the South.”
“Mark and I have different views of the world when it comes to Internet TV,” Ronen told me. “He believes that the Internet is not designed for video consumption, from a technology standpoint, and that the way people watch TV today — using the cable networks — is the way of the future. So he is skeptical about the technology, that’s one thing. Another thing that he’s skeptical about, I think, is the business model. I think he believes the existing business model is the winning business model and that’s how it should remain moving forward.
“I think that there are going to be multiple business models, and while bundled subscriptions may remain or have a share, there are going to be other models as well that are going to work to the benefit of content owners and the creative people. And I think that’s another thing you can learn from history: I think there’s always opposition to a new medium and sometimes it takes a short time and sometimes it takes a long time, but eventually the new medium also represents new opportunities and, in many cases, great opportunities for the media business.
“Whether it was VHS or DVD or even cable networks … you know, every time there is a new medium or a new technology, the knee jerk reaction is very defensive and skeptical about that new technology. But then I think later on they see that it opens up a whole new world of opportunity for them, and I think very much the same about the Internet.”
On his blog, Ronen slyly positions Cuban as the favorite, because:
- He is Mark Cuban.
- He owns the Dallas Mavericks. I get excited when I get bleacher seats for a Knicks game.
- He was on “Dancing with the Stars.” I can’t even get slow dancing right.
“Though if things get physical,” Ronen wrote, “I think I can take him out.”
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