Water Cooler – Same as always. The popular shows would still be the popular shows, just not network-centric. The weirdo smurfoids who spend many waking hours scrounging for some drippy foreign peice of psuedointellectual psuedocomedy will still spend many waking hours scanning directories for the least popular programs, and will continue to be ridiculed at the water cooler. “Weirdo smurfoids like me,” I should have written. Although the popular shows would be available on demand, my guess is that the majority of the hits would still occur the evening that the program is first available. Those who missed the episode would fake it until the following night, when they’d play catch up. Not that different than what occurs now, with cable subsidiaries playing the big Net shows in repeat a few nights later (24 on Fox, then F/X…The Contender on NBC then CNBC.)

Good new stuff: the same – Googling and Marketing and GoogleMarketing.

Ratings would convert to hits. AC Nielsen would adapt or dump its tv measuring monopoloy (they are way bigger than that service, anyhow, and are already in competition with alternative measurement cos.) It would actually be more accurate, because it would measure actual viewers and stickiness. The Rating would switch to a 12.4 (million viewers)/ 36 (million looks, incl. repeat viewings) That would be a collossal success.

It could also get better demographic margins, so spanish programs for spanish speaking Americans, for example, could better target their audience.

Of course, a technical notion of privacy is already out the door here, but who cares. As long as I get to see Monday Night Football and select Dennis Miller commentary, take my social security number and my first born, because I’m in, Chachi.

Before cable cos change their price structure, the entire pricing of programming (which you began to illustrate) would have to change. Cable’s got too much infrastructure in the ground and too limited of services (right now, mostly tv and internet…but they are getting into the telephone business now) to begin to be very price elastic, even if Internet offers tv. Technically, a bunch of stuff still has to happen before that’s even a reality. Early adopters are online right now, experimenting with direct purchase online video, but we’re still a decade from the Internet being a viable television competitor.

1) A tv set costs $50. Granted, it is tiny and crappy, but its in color and it gets Desperate Housewives without requiring anything but a basic knowledge of electrical outlets.

2) A computer “receiver” is relatively complex to a television, and far more expensive, especially for it to produce the video quality equivalent to the most basic television picture.

3) Even if an internet receiver were adopted to display television only, and behave like a television, it would be one of those devices like the old email receivers that Best Buy used to sell – kind of like something better, more expensive than something worse…resulting in a ferociously unpopular, although ingenius product.

These two facts alone point to the fact that cable companies may react to Internet TV, but they won’t drop prices. Nor will they have to. At least not for a while.

Finally, how fast a pipe? 8 megabits should be plenty. Issues on an 8 meg pipe are from something other than the pipe.