One Giant Digital Leap ...

From Cable to Internet: An Instant Quantum Leap In TV Programming

We’re about to enter an unprecedented era in digital communications. Soon the entire planet will take the colossal step of delivering television programming via the Internet.

There was a time not so long ago when the Pony Express could deliver a written message across a thousand miles in just a few weeks. At the time, this was an amazing accomplishment. Soon after, innovation took hold and along came the cheaper, faster telegraph. You could now get messages to other cities in minutes. It wasn’t long until the telephone came, then radio, then television.

Forty years ago, all television was broadcast through the air through the use of sending and receiving antennae. High costs limited the number of broadcasters to just a few players. Costs fell when cable TV entered the picture. Cable reached areas once inaccessible by broadcast TV and dramatically increased the number of available channels. Consumers now have hundreds of channels from which to choose, and the pace of recent innovation has been staggering.

Yet while cable TV still dominates the television industry, the cost of producing and broadcasting high quality video is now a tiny fraction of what it used to be.

We have already seen the progression from Blockbuster® to Netflix®, and from Pay-Per-View to Cable On-Demand. Today, ubiquitous content and universal access is rapidly changing the landscape. Consumers can watch virtually any TV show or movie whenever they want. TIVO and digital video technology has given consumers the power to skip commercial messages while recording specific content for later viewing.

The death of the "channel" is upon us. We have arrived close to a point where consumers will be able to choose among tens of thousands of programs available from thousands of sources worldwide, and view them whenever and wherever they choose.

The Internet will transform television far more than cable, and the change will happen in an instant. By 2010, nearly all TVs being sold will display in high definition HDTV, and be Internet-ready.

Already, Netflix Watch Instantly® provides consumers with a selection of 6,000 movies and TV shows to play over their computer instantly. Soon, consumers will select from a global library of available movies, shows, documentaries and everything else imaginable.

Every day the volume and scope of online programming increases exponentially, and costs are pushed ever lower. In an instant, you can forge free personal video blogs available for all the world to view. This has caused Google’s YouTube® to quickly rise to be today’s #1 Internet destination.

We are witnessing the next incarnation of self-publishing. Desktop publishing was borne in the 1980’s, allowed consumers to design and publish their own documents. Next came email, the Internet and websites, and now podcasts and streaming video on YouTube®. On the near horizon is the advent of "person-to-person TV", soon to be delivered via the Internet.

Targeted Television Advertising To As Few As 100 Viewers?

More people are spending more time on the Internet than ever before. They are quietly welding unbreakable bonds with websites they frequent for entertainment, business, relationships and learning. The interactive nature of the web, combined with email, allows web-based companies to quickly learn all about their visitors’ likes and dislikes, and then cater the online experience to meet those needs.

Imagine uploading your own TV production to any consumer’s desktop/TV, complete with targeted advertising. Let your imagination run with it. TV ads, the long-held sacred ground of media giants, will yield to the creativity of entrepreneurs empowered with little more than a video camera, iMovie editing software and a little imagination.

This new development allows MiracleMind to take full advantage of this effective, efficient and highly targetable system for distribution to anyone with a broadband connection. While the merging of TV and the Internet will produce a new wave of couch potatoes, it will also produce a tsunami of people who get off the couch and sculpt a better life for their families and the world at large. As you read further into this month’s issue, you’ll begin to see a compelling combination of message, medium, brand exposure and network distribution.