Last November, I wrote a column here about the future of cable television.  In that column from last November I forecast:

“Cable television subscriptions will experience noticeable percentage declines in the next three to five years.”

Last week it was announced that for the first time in history paid television subscriptions dropped 216,000 with cable taking the greatest hit.

The conventional wisdom of course is that this is due to the bad economic conditions of today.  Of course that is a factor, but the times have been bad for the past two years.  The new dynamic is what I touched upon in last year’s column; that the video viewing marketplace is fundamentally changing, that disintermediation is entering the living room with televisions with internet connectivity and that people have become increasingly comfortable with alternative screens.  In addition, people have come to accept paying for what they watch.  The cable television model is based upon having people pay for all the channels they don’t watch.  Why would people who willingly pay for what they watch any longer except paying for channels they don’t watch?

Of course, a decline of 216,000 subscribers is nowhere near a “noticeable percentage decline”, but I believe that this first ever downturn will be looked back upon as the early indicator of the trend I forecast last year.  As for the rest of that forecast from last years’ column:

“This decline will only be slowed if they [cable operators] accept unbundling and price per channel. This will cause a variety …

To many, the absolute collapse of the magazine industry in 2009 may seem stunning.  What is stunning to me is that the industry didn’t see it coming and take steps to avert this collapse.  Once again, another industry can only see a year ahead and thinks that a down year – 2008 – would be followed by a flat or up year. Historically in the advertising business that has been the career experience of the senior executives, so why not look to the past for reassurance?

The Big Three auto companies had an insular culture that didn’t pay attention to outside forces.  They only focused on the fact that they could make $1,500-2,000 profit per SUV and pick-up trucks, so they just kept making them hoping – not thinking that is for sure – it would all continue.  We know where that led.

Conde Nast took pride in its’ high level extravagant culture.  Bright and shiny and expensive always worked in the past, so hey, we’ll be ok in the future.   Whoops! It looks like we have to shut down some new and iconic titles as they are no longer viable businesses.

Business Week, one of the iconic business publications of the last half century was sold for $5 million.  Sounds like what was a good revenue week three years ago.  Who bought them?  The well diversified, global, multi-media, multi-revenue stream Bloomberg.  Just think about an on-line and video, global weekly news and feature product called Business Week, served up on consoles and …

[Note:  This is a column reprinted from the current "Shift Age Newsletter" as it is very timely and has already received a lot of positive comment.  If you are not yet a subscriber of the newsletter, please go here and click on FREE subscription]

Those of you who have either read “The Shift Age” or have heard me speak about the Shift Age, know that the accelerating global electronic connectedness is one of the three forces that has, is and will continue to reshape our world.  There are now 4 billion cell phone subscribers in the world.  Facebook has more that 200 million users.  Twitter is approaching 20 million users and all these numbers are increasing every day.

There is no longer any time, distance or place in human communication. That both transforms reality and creates new realities and opportunities.  It is as though human communication is completely fluid and like water, can flow anywhere without boundaries, channels or hierarchies.  Humans can interact with other humans in ways never before experienced in history.  Our connectedness is a force in and of itself.

What has occurred these past few weeks in Iran will be regarded as one of the events in the geopolitical world that is both a confirmation of this new force and a signpost to our future global orientation.

Even a month ago, it would have seemed hard for most people to imagine that Twitter tweets would be used as news sources about a major event in the New York Times, …

We have all lived through a lifetime of technology changing the media and content landscape.  Satellites allowed cable television and later satellite television to erode and then eviscerate the traditional broadcast network business model.  Then the analog to digital transition eliminated the physicality of the product in the music industry.  Then the universal, immediate and free availability of news and information on the Internet has pushed news magazines and newspapers to the edge of the abyss.

It is now cable television’s turn to face the disintermediating power of the Internet and technology.  This is a trend I have forecast for the past two years.

Cable television has long had a strangle hold on the American household as it has been the “last 30 feet” of connectivity into the home.  Owning this connection has allowed cable television MSOs and operators to control a great deal of the media access to the home and, in many cases such as customer service and pricing, act as a monopoly.  First was the connectivity to the world of cable television.  This was followed by …

It was just reported that, as expected, there are now more Internet users in China than in the U.S. As of last month there were 253 million Internet users in China as compared to 220 million in the U.S. What is striking is that in just the last year, the number of new users in China was 90 million, or a growth rate of more than 50%. That annual increase in users is more that the total number of users in most countries in the world.

There are several interesting aspects to these numbers. Of course, since China is the most populous country in the world with more than 1.3 billion people, it will ultimately have more of most any category of people, based on size alone. It is interesting that there seems to be an age divide in China. Not only are 70% of the country’s internet users under the age of 30, 90% of the new users in the last six months were high school students. This reflects the fact that the booming economy in China is led and fueled by those under the age of 40 as many of the older generations are still anchored in the past.

It is possible that, if current growth rates continue, China could have twice as many Internet users as the U.S. within two years. It is when that happens that Internet usage in China will bring about significant change. The 253 million Internet …