Life without a cable box in millions of homes would be excruciating, devastating and empty.
How else would you expect the cable companies to feel if the Internet -- after plundering the music industry, Hollywood and newspapers -- becomes the dominant delivery system for television programming in the United States?
It could happen.
"There's no reason why the Internet cannot replace cable or satellite or even OTA [over-the-air] transmission of content," says Edward Woo, an Internet and digital media analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles. "When the Internet as a TV platform really takes off, it will strain the cable companies' current business model."
Newspapers were the first to falter. Now it's the cable companies' turn to withstand or wither. Last month, in an unprecedented collaboration, Comcast and Time Warner announced a deal that would allow Comcast subscribers to watch Time Warner's cable networks -- TBS and TNT would be the first -- via the Internet.
That move could represent the beginning of a new TV reality, the possibility of buying only the programming you want -- for example CNN, ESPN, A&E and HBO -- from various vendors without all the filler and expense of cable bundles. More likely, it's a cable plan to preserve those bundles and audience dominance.
"I have a theory that consumers don't want multiple vendors," says Russ Crupnick, an entertainment analyst for the NPD Group in Port Washington, N.Y.
People "already have a relationship with Verizon, T-Mobile or AT&T. We have a billing relationship with cable," he says. "That's a huge relationship."
