Proof Once Again.......Follow

Hell, I just upgraded my phone for free, when I was waiting till next week to put down the $99. Thanks Best Buy!

With the prevalence of online, streaming content...yeah the standard (and even newer) television broadcast models will be extinct rather soon. What really makes this apparent is that online/streaming providers (like Netflix) are starting to produce their own content.

Cable telelvision (and network TV) will continue until someone
(A) Figures out a way to profit off online content without requiring subscriptions of a half-dozen online services
-and-
(B) Figures out a way to produce a central clearinghouse for locating content

By the second one, I mean that networks still rely on channel surfing and lead-in shows to get people to watch their stuff. If everything is fragmented across different sites, viewership (and profit) suffers. Your average TV viewer doesn't pirate episodes of their shows so if they see them online, it'll be at the consent of the network; either because NBC puts it on their site or because they lease the episode to Hulu, iTunes, Amazon or whoever. They're still very much in control of how it gets out there and television is still the best way for them to do it.

I'm sure TV will be around for a long while, but increasingly it will become more like radio as a service, probably to eventually include very cheap or free service subscriptions which act primarily as advertisements themselves.