One of the internet's founding fathers, Vint Cerf, is predicting the end of TV as we know it as convergence between the internet and other forms of media continues.
Cerf was a founding member of the Internet Society and is Google's chief internet evangelist. He made his prediction when speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival last weekend.
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He expects the television industry to change rapidly as it enters its "iPod moment". He warned television executives that television is approaching the same kind of tipping point the music industry has struggled with following the arrival of the iPod.
"85 per cent of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time," he said, according to The Guardian's Bobbie Johnson. "You're still going to need live television for certain things - like news, sporting events and emergencies - but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later," he added.
He warned television media moguls that they should approach this as an opportunity that needs to be exploited, rather than as a threat to their future.
His predictions emerge as UK broadcasters move to offer their programming online through such systems as the BBC's heavily-criticised Windows-only iPlayer service.
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Cerf expects that most television will in future be broadcast over the internet, noting that this will lead to an explosion in new interactive broadcast media.
Cerf also dismissed ISP's concerns that the existing infrastructure wouldn't be able to support such uses as "scaremongering", observing that this argument was also raised when the internet first appeared.
"We're far from exhausting capacity," he said.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger issued a similar warning at the event, observing that the newspaper industry could also face its own iPod moment, when future devices read text so effectively that print could be threatened, the Press Gazette reports.
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Cerf was a founding member of the Internet Society and is Google's chief internet evangelist. He made his prediction when speaking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival last weekend.
Story Continues Below
He expects the television industry to change rapidly as it enters its "iPod moment". He warned television executives that television is approaching the same kind of tipping point the music industry has struggled with following the arrival of the iPod.
"85 per cent of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time," he said, according to The Guardian's Bobbie Johnson. "You're still going to need live television for certain things - like news, sporting events and emergencies - but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later," he added.
He warned television media moguls that they should approach this as an opportunity that needs to be exploited, rather than as a threat to their future.
His predictions emerge as UK broadcasters move to offer their programming online through such systems as the BBC's heavily-criticised Windows-only iPlayer service.
Story Continues Below
Cerf expects that most television will in future be broadcast over the internet, noting that this will lead to an explosion in new interactive broadcast media.
Cerf also dismissed ISP's concerns that the existing infrastructure wouldn't be able to support such uses as "scaremongering", observing that this argument was also raised when the internet first appeared.
"We're far from exhausting capacity," he said.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger issued a similar warning at the event, observing that the newspaper industry could also face its own iPod moment, when future devices read text so effectively that print could be threatened, the Press Gazette reports.
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