Much has been made of supposed decline in the number of cable TV subscribers. But not everyone agrees that mass cord-cutting is reshaping the industry. Indeed, according to Kyle Dixon, Time Warner’s VP of Public Policy, we are seeing the “opposite” of cord-cutting with Time Warner seeing no “significant decrease” for its paid content.
I interviewed Dixon earlier this week at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum where he spoke on a panel about the economic implications of online video. What Dixon stressed to me is that, for all the online videos of what he described as “kittens flushing toilets”, consumers still really want high-quality news and entertainment content from networks like HBO. And thus, while the Internet is obviously changing our viewing habits, it is yet to revolutionize the television industry. So is Dixon right – is cord-cutting an illusion?