Who is going to disrupt the Pay TV industry?

I've spent the last few weeks having renewed discussions with a variety of people whose opinion I respect in this space, including those in the Twitter-sphere, the blogosphere, and in plain old real life, and with the NCTA Cable Show happening in Boston next week, I think it is the right time to open this debate up again.

The debate is simple: Who is going to disrupt the current Pay TV industry?

A few months ago at the OTT Con in Santa Clara, I had this discussion in spades with many of the participants in the would-be "cable killer" world (most of whom themselves are "cord cutters" or at least "cord thinners").  My take aways after those discussions were that it was incredibly premature to even think about "Over the Top" or "broadband" video killing the established Pay TV operators like Comcast, DirecTV and Verizon because only the metrics had indicated that all of the current players combined had only made a minor dent in TV Viewing (3 hours of online viewing vs. 34 of traditional viewing per week, 2% of the $200B TV advertising spent on "on-line" video) and that so far the only business being disrupted in a serious manner was DVD sell-thru, which was suffering as much from physical Netflix and the shift from purchase to rental as it was from digital Netflix.  My brief conclusion then was simple: Large pay TV operators were bringing in an average monthly bill per household of close to $100 (ARPU) and the would be disruptors were still in the sub-$15 range and those Pay TV operators were "Striking Back" with their own TV Everywhere solutions, so any would-be survivors in the next 3-5 years would have to deliver an incredibly compelling user experience (UX) centered around Discovery (likely on the second screen).

My Review of TimeWarner Cable TV App as a SecondScreen Experience

I do believe that most of the video service providers (Cable MSOs, Telcos, or Sattelite) will do the minimum required to reduce the churn of their service (vs. 3rd party apps trying to create a revenue stream).  This app is good evidence of that theory.  The app struggled to work with the cable box, and without the box speaking to the app, it was only usable as a 1st screen app (ie streamed channels for TV Everywhere).  However, that TV Everywhere concept only works when you are in the house--more like a "TV In Your House" feature--except I already have TV's in my house...

Ironically, without the app communicating to the cable box, you cannot even bring up the guide (very odd design).  So I will give this a quick go, but will definitely need to come back later on the DVR and Guide functionality (channel change, etc).

- Simple.  The app's main purpose seems to be to provide DVR and Guide functionality (channel change, etc).  My guess is that this will be a medium once I get customer service to fix my neighbor's box integration.  Medium.

- Social.  No evidence of any integration of Facebook or Twitter.  None.

- Seamless.  There is no attempt to integrate any content other than that of Time Warner Cable.  None.

- Stimulating.  No evidence of anything other than the guide data.  None.

- Discovery.  No evidence of any ability to help you discover any content.  None.

Back soon to confirm the views on Simple.