The cable explosion in the early 1980s showcased the public’s desire for variety, but Bruce Springsteen was largely right. There was “57 Channels (and nothing on).” Remember those days?! There was nothing but Pro-bowling on the sports channels and station after station of infomercials. Who can forget Ronco’s GLH (Great Looking Hair) and the George Forman Grill. Now I have some 700 specialty channels. I can time shift. I can watch whatever, whenever. I can watch a Return of the Jedi, Aliens, and Star Trek II all in the same night; in 1995, I’d have to run to the video rental place to borrow three VHS tapes.
It took some 20 years for the desired content and technology to converge. We’ve solved the whatever and the whenever, and only the wherever remains. The wherever explosion is mobile applications which are bringing together content, social networking and feedback in a meaningful way. There are over 1,000,000 apps in the Apple App Store. Each application is like a TV channel. There are a lot of channels with nothing on, or with static content that never changes. Purple Forge is paving the way to build compelling broadcast channels with the mechanisms to spread good content, and gather relevant feedback that can be used to make content better - something it took the cable industry over 20 years to figure out!