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"I've Cracked It!"

Reportedly Steve Jobs' final words about Apple's long-rumored venture into the thickets of TV programming.  So has Apple, indeed, "cracked it?"  Let's hope so.

Analyst Shaw Wu on why Apple should enter the TV business: “What’s missing is live broadcast television,” he wrote. “One obvious way to offer this is via the traditional way where a user subscribes to cable or satellite. But a more revolutionary, disruptive and differentiated way, is via the internet or IPTV which would be more in-line with its iTunes and iCloud model. Because of the high dependence on content providers, we believe exact timing is difficult to pinpoint.”

He added, “We continue to hear what AAPL would love to do is offer users the ability to choose their own customized programming, i.e., whichever channels/shows they want for a monthly subscription fee. This is obviously much more complicated from a licensing standpoint. And in our view, would change the game for television and give AAPL a big leg-up against the competition.”  (Emphasis mine.)

Strategic separation of the magnitude Apple delivers is assembled from doing, not what others AREN'T doing, but doing what others CAN'T do.  The hard stuff.  The 'never been done before' risky stuff that nobody else has the fortitude or the imagination to tackle. 

Like the mobility to choose my own programming.  Whatever channels I want for a monthly fee.  No more surfing past the twenty channels I ignore to find the three I watch.  And maybe I can tell Siri  "NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES, DON'T EVER SHOW ME ALEX BALDWIN OR LADY GAGA!"

Like being the easiest hospital with which to do business, the no-hassle, no-BS hospital.  

Know anybody doing that?  Me neither. 

Is 2012 the year disaggregation and disruption (finally) come to TV?  Is it the year for cable providers' stodgy attitudes and crappy service to (finally) bite 'em in the ass?  Stay tuned (pun intended.)
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