Hollywood does not know the way to San Jose

THE last few weeks have been revolutionary ones in the United States, at least from the perspective of Hollywood. In rapid succession, ESPN announced that it is set to launch a streaming-only service for NBA content, CBS launched an online streaming service for its shows, and HBO said it would offer a standalone streaming service next year.

In a span of a week, all kinds of prized content suddenly became unbundled from the cable companies that had, uptil now, slapped them together in a heedless mix of programming for an ever-increasing monthly fee. Now, it appears as if the sleeping behemoths of television content have awakened and risen to the Great Digital Challenge posed by the Internet.

While there has been much exultation, it is worth considering if the industry truly understands what customers want. Viewers' habits have changed beyond recognition in the last decade and the recent service offerings by content owners are reactionary in comparison. CBS's online streaming service, for example, offers only its content. This would be fine if there was a perfect overlap between what it offered and the entire universe of TV shows that a viewer cared about. But this is not the case. Today, consumers get their media from a dizzying array of sources which now include two-minute YouTube clips produced by Buzzfeed, Paris Hilton's five-second video of her new Pomeranian on Instagram and 20-minute TED Talks. The entire definition of what a show is has been upended, and yet content owners and cable operators continue to fight along the same lines.