Television Networks Evolve: Cable, Satellite Broadband

Dino Corbin - Partner and General Manager, Deer Creak Broadcasting

In the beginning there were basically three networks: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Cable rolls in and starts wiring up houses and offering a multitude of options, and then follow that with satellite delivery and it completely changed the landscape and the competitive environment. All of a sudden, the networks had to start competing on a completely new and different landscape.

Robin Sloan - Vice President of Strategy, Current TV

There is one change that has yet to happen, but when it does it's going to completely transform the way we think about TV news. And that change is that we all have mobile phones with really, really good video cameras and fast connections to the Internet.

Terry Curtis - Communication Design, California State University, Chico

The reality of the network today is that every terminal is both a receiver and a sender.  And so it's many-to-many.  The network becomes not one-to-many but many-to-many.

Robin Sloan

Suddenly anything that happens and certainly big things like protests, disasters, sort of breaking news, big, sudden, crazy events -- it will be documented by a thousand people from every angle imaginable. How does that change the way we think about TV production? How does that change the way we think about watching news unfold in real-time? Nobody knows, but it is going to be an earthquake when it happens.

David Gale - VP of New Media, MTV

Yeah, I think it's probably already happened. I think that any kid could have their own network right now. The tools are available, every, we take it for granted at this point.

Peggy Miles - InterVox Communications

A network is a community. It doesn't matter if it's a community on Facebook, or Myspace, or on a television station. It's bringing together people, and there might be somebody, one kid, that has a skateboard channel, and he really knows what he's doing, he's an expert.

David Gale

So what you would have is an editing system or as a means of creating your own sort of television network of your own, whatever, however you may define that, because you maybe define a network, if you're defining it as a traditional TV network where it's programming and you can put it out there, that's one kind of network. Or you can describe a network as a group of people coming together which is the way that people are talking about networking right now. So network on the TV side, when you think about TV, is one term. Network, the way I think most people think about it today in new media is a totally different term. But they come together in an interesting way.