@AmyVernon wow, you had better jump on that in reply to AmyVernon #

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@ChrisSerico I have never been able to get that song out of my head since it came out. in reply to ChrisSerico #

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Perhaps! I barely know what im doing tomorrow let alone october RT @myasmine @jeffreymarx Thanks Jeff! P.S. See you at @WordCampPhilly? #

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I believe this to be only the tip of the iceburg. The article mentioned how the number of people who have made this decision makes up less than 1% of people who subscribe to satellite and cable. I remember when newspaper executives were throwing out similar numbers back in the late 90’s. Which was about as reassuring as Kevin Bacon’s character in Animal House saying “Remain Calm, All is well!”.

Despite all the handwriting on the wall over the past couple years, Cable TV executives seem content to just let their companies get hit by the storm, rather than adjusting their business models. One thing is for sure. What they are doing now will not work for much longer. You may have noticed a lot of disputes coming up lately between tv networks and service providers. The most prominent of which, is when ABC 7 New York actually shut their channel down on Cablevision over a contract dispute, a night before the Oscars. A deal was settled right after the Oscars started. But the point is that tv networks are realizing that they have many other ways to reach their customers now.

The obvious difference between newspaper and TV is that it’s much easier to replicate words on the internet than video. Not to mention that intellectual property restrictions are much tighter on multimedia content than they are on newspaper copy. But eventually technology always catches up. And now it is doing so at a rate which should make TV service providers nervous. Hulu, Netflix, Itunes, Youtube, can all be broadcast on ipads now. Networks are allowing users to download their popular shows directly off their web sites. And people are finding ways to hook their devices into TVs, so they don’t even need to watch it on small screens anymore.

As these trends continue, Cable TV companies will be getting squeezed and their years of contentment (and perhaps the worst customer service practices of just about any industry) will come back to haunt them. People accustomed to waiting hours for a cable guy to keep an appointment, will have no problem give their tv service providers the finger in favor of something over which they have more control.

If there is a smart way for cable/satellite companies to embrace the internet, then it would certainly be up to people smarter than myself to decide that. I would guess that Service providers may start offering more on-demand options for movies and shows and to improve their very clunky DVR systems. But most importantly, they need to start repairing their severely damaged relationships they have with their customers. They’ll need to consider lowering their rates and offering their customers more flexibility. How about letting people customize their own cable channel lineup? They’ll need to give customers more reasons to stay loyal in the face of having many other options. As the web gives customers more control than they have every had, overly bloated media companies are losing their once powerful monopolies. We have started to see some modest turnarounds for newspapers, and that is because they own content/intellectual property that still has some value. Cable/Satellite companies really provide  no original content and don’t have much to fall back on when the hammer strikes down on them. And that hammer will come down. It is only a matter of time.

I’ll be following this story closely.

@unclejuicyjoe On my mobile I use Tweetie or Tweetdeck. On my laptop I just use twitter.com. And I won on black a couple times in reply to unclejuicyjoe #

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if you are on Wordpress, then you should be using akismet which is a software made by Automattic (the creators of wordpress). That is the best wordpress plugin you can have to stop spam. other plugins and software include: Bad Behavior (use at your own risk, can be very buggy) and Spam Karma, and of course captchas. But these spammers are trying to make a living too, and they are figuring out new ways to get around our defenses. One of the latest trends I have seen are spam messages that seem complimentary to your blog, but actually contain links spam sites that could put malicious spyware in your readers’ computer. They stroke your ego to try and make sure you don’t delete their comments. So keep an eye out for comments that are a little too nice. Here are a couple examples;
“so impressive and beautiful thank you for preparing a site admin.”
“I wish to continue your success permanent”

Mouse over the the author’s name and you’ll most like see a shady-looking url that probably sells Viagara.
Be sure to mark them as ’spam’ so that your akismet spam filter will recognize these types of messages more quickly in the future.

Not all complementary posts are going to be malicious, but if you have a wordpress blog, this is definitely something you need to watch out for.