iPod Moment Approaching for Television

Google's Vint Cerf "one of the founding fathers of the internet" has predicted the "iPod moment" for television in an article in the Telegraph.

In the same way that people now download their favourite music onto their iPod, he said that viewers would soon be downloading most of their favourite programmes onto their computers.

Personally I believe, or hope, that Mr. Cerf is talking about an escalation of what is already going on. Certainly many people already download programming. Already I've talked to a large number of people, primarily but not exclusively young, who don't really watch television (except for news and sports) any other way. That programming that is not offered by the producers/distributors is all being offered by someone, generally ad free and the networks, if they don't already offer programming for download, will have a hard time getting people to switch to the legal version with the ads.