Disruption. Get used to it.

There are few things that irk me more than when industries or businesses complain about disruptive new technology. One thing that does irk me more, is when those same industries or businesses want special treatment or compensation to deal with the disruption. And there is no one industry that is more guilty of this kind of behaviour, than the entertainment industry.

Musicians claimed that the phonograph would put them out of business. The MPAA claimed that the VCR would put the movie industry out of business. The mp3 player was supposed to kill the music industry.

Now the disruptive technology the television industry is up in arms about, is internet streaming. They're losing advertising revenue. I wonder why. At the risk of sounding biased, the reason streaming has caught on and is cutting into traditional television is because streaming gives the consumer better value for the money. You pay your money and then you get your content. Right now. All of it. Who wouldn't want that? But because traditional television and cable doesn't know how to transform their offerings to make them more competitive, they falter.

It seems that every decision they make goes against what a typical consumer would want. They can own content and either restrict who can show it, or worse - and this happens a lot - don't even make it available at all. So if I want access to all content, I have to subscribe to cable, every channel, but I can only see content that has been scheduled and I may be blocked from seeing content that has different licensing arrangements in my country, even though I subscribe to the original owner of the content.

What these owners and providers are going to need to learn very quickly is that the newest generations of consumers don't feel the need to play that game. They will ignore your content altogether if you force them to jump through hoops to get it. And just subscribe to Netflix, etc. It's already happening and it's only going to get worse. Because with each passing year, consumers who are willing to shell out big bucks for access to everything on someone else's terms are disappearing.

The Canadian government seems to think that the cable and content creation industries need more financial help to overcome the existence of streaming and are considering a new tax. I say screw that. You want your ccustomers back? Improve the content and / or give us what we want. All access, all the time.