This is Awards Season. And in La La Land, that means that all the cool kids (ie, famous folks) get dolled up and hit the red carpets and ballrooms to recognize each other because they’re so “amazing.” Many of them truly are extraordinary actors, directors, producers, writers, etc. Others are just global superstars whose presence at these events generates massive publicity and bigger TV ratings points for the televised awards shows. No one’s curing cancer here, but let’s face it: It’s a system. It’s part of the publicity machine that helps feed and clothe thousands of white- and blue-collar workers with entertainment-related jobs, not to mention gardeners, nannies and rehab clinics. The system works. It’s a slick, perpetual motion machine built on mutually assured egomania and fueled by the public’s insatiable appetite for celebrity news. It’s a world in which “Who are you wearing?” gets asked as if the answer could quite possibly solve world hunger. Of course, revealing the dress designer’s name only encourages the press to dig deeper. “Why do you love it?,” the most enterprising reporters yell from rope line, to which the stars cheerfully respond with succinct but insightful missives like “it’s comfortable” or “it’s red.” Take that, world hunger! Take that!!

 

For the press, covering an awards event can be a humbling experience. It’s truly like high school. Imagine that the most popular kids in school—the football players, the cheerleaders, the rich kids, etc—all organized their own series of VIP proms and then invited the rest of the school to watch them arrive in hopes they might come over and talk on the way inside. Some of the cool kids are like Reese Witherspoon in “Legally Blonde” or Alicia Silverstone in “Clueless”: They actually care about the freaks and geeks. They talk to everybody, including even those of us relegated to the last stretch of the red carpet. They’re pleasant. They’re respectful. We know they know we know we’re not as cool. But they gracefully decline to bring that to our attention. Others rush past these smaller outlets smiling and waving apologetically… It’s sort of like when you see a homeless person begging from the sidewalk. You don’t want to give money, but you know… ya sorta feel bad. So you just make eye contact and smile. Still others rush past eyes forward, completely ignoring the desperate, pained cries for attention and flailing limbs assaulting their eardrums and peripheral vision, respectively.

 

To be sure, how the stars work the red carpet can be revealing. At the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday (where cable cleaned up by the way… subs can check our coverage in CableFAX Daily), some of the biggest stars were also the most gracious, pushing away their nagging publicists as they stopped to chat with a small Minnesota radio station or a 3^rd-tier newspaper or a blogger with a cheap video camera. Meryl Streep was ridiculously friendly. George Clooney, who was clearly in a hurry to get inside, still stopped when one female reporter practically lunged over the rope to get his attention. He was all smiles—and probably made her life.

 

I was wedged between a group of extremely excited (and sequined) indie entertainment writers and an Access Hollywood 2^nd-unit crew at the end of the rope line. As it turned out, my seemingly lowest-on-the-totem-pole position quickly got an upgrade as I noticed an AH covert operation underway to snag Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt for an on-camera interview before they disappeared into the bowels of the Shrine Auditorium. Producers scrambled. Cameramen switched out batteries. AH host Shaun Robinson rushed over to grab the mic and deftly corralled Pitt, who gave her a couple minutes on camera. Then came Jolie, who was only behind her beau because she was so busy giving even the lowliest scribes a quote or two. Finally, Robinson pounced on her for a quick interview before the Bradgelina duo disappeared. And with the homecoming king and queen safely inside, the show could finally begin as the rest of the high school filtered into the press room to watch it via closed circuit TV. Hollywood, baby. Hollywood.

 

Everyone’s buzzing about a new Flurry Analytics study that finds daily time spent in mobile apps exceeds desktop/mobile Web consumption for the 1^st time. It’s an amazing shift if you really think about it: Apps are the new browsers. And even though Web browsers often give users much more freedom than an app designed for a specific function, consumers are choosing apps over browsing for their connectivity needs. It’s really about convenience and user-friendliness, combined with greater wireless data usage and wrapped in the overall reality that people prefer to use apps when retrieving info in a mobile environment. What can cable learn from this? Plenty.

 

Early attempts at interactive TV essentially ported the PC browser to the TV environment, and the results were disastrous. None of those early iTV firms took off, and many went out of business or got absorbed into larger companies that really just wanted the patents and/or technology for various purposes. The browser didn’t work in the TV environment. And it’s clunky in the mobile environment as well. Sure, mobile versions of Websites work pretty well on smartphones, but people are voting with their usage patterns and generally choosing apps when they are available (Many apps, of course, simply display mobile Web pages, but there’s something aesthetically appy about how they look that makes us all forget that we’re in a browser experience). Even in the traditional computer environment, apps are making a play, with Apple’s recent launch of a version of its App Store in the Mac environment. Again, it’s an amazing shift.

 

In the cable set-top environment, the traditional EPG and VOD menus are essentially old school browsers based on how we used to search for TV content. No one really wants to use a remote control to spell out the name of a show or search for VOD content. And as Comcast chief Brian Roberts’ presentation at the Cable Show reminded us, a more streamlined and app-like interface—complete with easy “share” buttons, recommendation engines and intuitive ways to find something that leads to something else that leads to something else—simply feels better. Sure, you can do these sorts of things in a browser-esque environment (Amazon has done it well for years), but like the mobile environment that must conform to a smaller screen, the TV environment must conform to eyeballs that are farther away and therefore less willing to type or hunt around for content.

 

With EBIF-fueled apps starting to gain acceptance, CE manufacturers making more connected TVs and Roberts out there pushing the envelope, rest assured that app usage will only continue to climb. And it will happen on every platform, including TV. Get ready.

 

Monetization. It’s one of those words that comes up all the time and yet carries with it the paradoxical tendency to evoke “duhs” from many while also spurring a lot of head scratching, soul searching and stress induction among others. The truth is that the cable industry has always been a cashflow junkie on both the operator and programmer sides. This mutual addiction serves the industry well as everyone makes a few bucks, creates a few jobs and ultimately serves consumers (even if cable doesn’t always meet its customers’ every expectation). Any disruption to these mighty rivers of cash can put even the calmest executive into a bit of a panic as they scramble to replace lost revenue. And in recent years, that’s been all about finding new streams in which to fish, whether new ways to exploit the cable wire on the operator side or new ways to squeeze money out of existing and new content on the programmer side.

 

It all seems pretty simple: Have a product, charge for it. But the Internet has largely trained the public not to part so easily with its hard-earned cash. In fact, over the last decade or so, the cyberabundance has trained them to do the absolute opposite. So that makes monetizing new media platforms increasingly tricky for an industry addicted to cash and hard pressed to watch its margins shrink out of some shoulder-shrugging surrender to this New Guilded Age of Endless Bits. Cable operators have started rolling out authentication to keep linear dollars flowing, and programmers are largely playing along in a self-interested bid to preserve license fee revenue. But many content owners are also going off the cable reservation with new over-the-top deals that offer viewers new ways to get that content—ways that don’t necessarily include a cable subscription.

 

Nothing new perhaps. This debate has raged for the last two or three years, and it’s only now starting to take shape into some sort of business. But it’s also still very early. Monetization is still shaking out. And new arrangements are bound to crop up, despite attempts to use authentication as an Internet extension of a typical distribution deal. Perhaps that will be the way of the future when all this craziness settles down into standard business practices. But if the experimentation taking place among traditional content players (not to mention the throw-out-the-rules attitude of new players like Netflix and Google) results in new business models that stand on their own… well, it’s hard to predict where the future will take us.

 

Could we face a future in which cable becomes a dumb pipe—and yet makes more money than ever (with ridiculous margins)? Could the iTunes phenomenon, which single-handedly stripped individual songs from their profitable album packages—play out with Internet video as premium content goes largely a la carte? Could consumers eventually tell the industry that, frankly… they simply don’t care about accessing 200 channels for one set price through a cable box and are content to pick and choose at much higher per-viewing-hour rates? Could this next generation—with its iPads, smartphones and vastly different viewing habits—simply overwhelm the natural tendency of the cable industry to preserve its current business model. Could monetization become decentralized to the point in which cable operators don’t even control program packages, rent boxes or send out trucks (other than to maintain infrastructure)? Could all content consumption come down to individual credit card, Paypal or iTunes charges—scattered out there on the same bills that list grocery items, restaurant meals and trips to Home Depot? And is all of this—while certainly disruptive and bad for business in the short term—ultimately a long-term win for the industry that’s just about single-handedly responsible for the broadband circus we enjoy today?

 

Lots of questions. Few answers. As the Cable Show approaches next month, let’s all just stay alert and try to figure it out. Together.

 

In this crazy, multi-platform, authenticated, piracy-challenged, interactively shifting world of video entertainment, only one constant binds the universe together: The Screen. This is more than a philosophical statement. The truth is that while all the talk about cord cutting and over-the-top offers important insight into viewing habits, including the tendency of modern consumers to demand time and place flexibility, those eyeballs are still glued to a flat piece of glass. The size of that glass may change depending on the device. But it’s still just glass filled with colorful pixels. In fact, the irony of what’s going on with broadband video and OTT is that the Mother of All Screens in your living room matters even more today than when it was the only game in town. With the hype over 3DTV starting to recede, TV makers have shifted their attention to “Smart TVs” (essentially, TVs connected to broadband and able to stream content from Internet-based services like Netflix). That's just a big computer. But we still call it a TV. What to do, what to do…

 

Just this week, Nielsen released its new 2012 estimate that the number of U.S. Television Homes will decline to 114.7 million from 115.9 million in 2011, bringing the percentage of U.S. homes with a TV set to 96.7%, down from 98.9% in 2011. We haven’t experienced a decline like that since the recession of the early 1990s, after which we saw years of steady TV penetration growth. To some, numbers like these are evidence that OTT is slowly killing the “core” TV business. But the truth is more complicated. “Watching TV” is no longer hardware specific. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Any device with a video-capable screen is pretty much a “TV set” whether or not most of us think of it that way. Whether something comes in via IP or QAM or over-the-air signals matters little to the viewer. It’s the same storytelling experience no matter the transmission method or device in question. To be sure, the numbers and industry psychology won’t reflect this for quite some time—and that’s the main reason we’re all clinging to old definitions of what makes a TV set.

 

To many consumers (especially the young ones), a screen is a screen is a screen. But to the media industry, which depends on measurement to determine ratings and therefore advertising rates and even license fees, the difference between a TV screen, a computer screen and a mobile device screen takes on much importance. Throw in VOD and other forms of time-shifted viewing across all of those screens, and it gets even more complicated.

 

On some level, we all kind of get it: A person watching Hulu Plus on his iPad is no less a viewer than the person watching a television hooked up to cable. But measurement on those two platforms involves completely different methodologies, not to mention varied levels of potential interactivity for the advertiser. They are valued differently as a result. It’s complicated. Very complicated, to sort all of this out. But it’s vital that the industry get to a point in which every screen is equal, and we no longer stress about how many “TV sets” fill our households. Only then can cable unleash its full creative energy and forge a new economic model that’s far stronger than what preceded it. We’re not there yet. But we’re getting closer.

My colleague Amy Maclean recently asked whether cable was getting cool again. Consider this piece a sequel of sorts, with a telecom twist. Because if you think cable has had problems in the cool department, let me tell ya about telecom. I spent a couple of years in the 1990s at Telecommunications Reports, a wonky newsletter that covers mostly telecom issues. We weren’t cool. And we knew it. Have you ever attended a NARUC meeting of state telecom regulators? It starts at 7 a.m. and involves about 12 hours of debate over the grammar, sentence structure and clause construction around various resolutions. It’s the opposite of cool. But people immersed in telecom minutiae thrive on its unending blandness the same way that squirrels happily munch on acorns and nothing else. It may seem boring to an outsider, but squirrels are built to love it. So goes the world of telecom.

 

The cable industry—while facing its own deficit of cool on certain fronts—has always been cooler than telecom. Even when cable operators launched broadband years ago, it seemed somehow hipper than DSL (and, of course, generally much faster). And when speeds reached multi-megabit levels in recent years, Web video took off—first as a user generated phenomenon with the YouTube generation but in recent years as an extension of linear TV. Premium online video is everywhere now. Hulu. Netflix. Even UG-vanguard YouTube. And it’s decidedly cool—at least for consumers who don’t have to worry about pesky details like finding a business model that sustains the content ecosystem.

 

And therein lies the challenge for all industries, including cable, that find themselves drenched in the newfound coolness of telecom. How do companies that grew up in the media world with defined silos under defined regulations and using defined CE technologies evolve into all-encompassing Bit Kings able to ride atop the Internet protocol to telecom greatness—all while capturing that media/entertainment biz coolness that Hollywood feeds so expertly to the masses? That’s why they pay you the big bucks, media executive. It’s on you to make it work.

 

One indication of how this will shake out comes not from Hollywood, but from Wall Street where the Financial Masters of the Universe are helping the telecom and media industries build new empires from the ashes of old media. Comcast’s recently closed acquisition of NBCU was cool because it involved glitzy assets like TV networks and movie studios. But it’s the less cool deals of late that may sneak up on everyone and prove even more significant. AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile will help Ma Bell hasten its LTE rollout and more quickly challenge cable’s dominance in broadband by giving customers super-fast broadband speeds along with mobility. Verizon, meanwhile, continues to build out LTE. Both will probably have LTE iPhones by year-end, not to mention a slew of other cool gadgets based on Google’s Droid OS. At the same time, Level 3—which powers Netflix video streaming and has been fighting with Comcast over how to trade traffic loads—has made a play for Global Crossing in a deal that would vastly extend its reach beyond U.S. borders. Hot. Cool. Who knows? But it’s definitely not boring. Pass the acorns.