Gates says TV is doomed, Internet where it’s at

Speaking to business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Bill Gates looked deep into his crystal ball and prognosticated that in 5 years, TV will be a lame duck and watching video on the internet will be all the rage. Way to go out on a limb Bill.

“Certain things like elections or the Olympics really point out how TV is terrible. You have to wait for the guy to talk about the thing you care about or you miss the event and want to go back and see it,” he said. Tivo has been doing this for years, and most cable and satellite providers offer PVR options.  Maybe Bill just doesn’t watch a lot of TV.

From Grant Robertson @ Download Squad, “What wider adoption of internet distributed video will bring and what the heads of major networks and news organizations should be up nights worrying about is democratization of content creation. More and more we’re finding great entertainment in low-buck, short format indie video and, in five years, the upper echelon of 15-24 year olds who are currently rocking the funny on sites like YouTube will be a force to reckon with, possibly even taking notches out of networks like Fox and NBC.

What’s stopping this all from happening immediately? Two things, monetization of content and a simple and ubiquitous TV/internet convergence device. For certain, any company who manages to solve either of those problems and catch the wave of public acceptance is headed for a big payday.”