TiVo Walked Away from Comcast
Say It Ain't So Dept: I read the announcement about Mike Ramsey stepping down as CEO of TiVo pretty calmly. He cited the usual one of two excuses: more time with the family or the company needs a different CEO to take things to the next level (in case he chose answer B) but I didn't really get what was happening. At CES TiVo was literally announcing something new every day. True, I still have yet to get TiVo to go on my system and it has been over 2 weeks, but with the idea that TiVo via the Web could bypass cable was pretty compelling, and I figured the little guy still had the oomph to fight. But I found this take on PVRBlog and it got me thinking:

"Remember how DirecTV accounts for 2,000,000 of TiVo's 3,000,000 customers and TiVo lost that relationship? TiVo was negotiating with Comcast last summer and offered less than the $1/month that they get from DirecTV, so Michael Ramsay decided to walk away. Now it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback in situations like this, but hasn't a big cable company deal been the dream all along? And in spite of sub-dollar monthly fees, couldn't the Tahiti strategy be an alternate revenue source for those customers?

"To be fair, if the Comcast deal had been inked and then TiVo was prevented from introducing innovative products because of their threat to the cable companies we'd all be screaming bloody murder. It's possible (note that word, this is pure speculation) that there was a non-negotiable clause that said something like "Non-Comcast video will not be available on the TiVo" which would have nixed any of the future plans like partnering with content providers. When the story of TiVo is written, this Comcast negotiation could be the point when the company's outcome was decided."

Gulp. Could this really be the end everyone has been talking about? The one I refused to consider? Suddenly I am getting a Sega feeling from all of this.


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