Do I really want my IPTV?

Amidst all the enthusiasm surrounding telco IPTV, forgive me for being curmudgeonly, but I find it interesting that newsflow surrounding TV as an activity looks pretty rugged, and makes me question whether the telcos are racing to recreate something which is in terminal decline. Today we see reports in Advertising Age that NBC is going to incur $50m in "make good" payments to advertisers because viewers in the 18 - 49 category are below minimum guarantees. Last week in the UK we had dire predictions about ITV, and the 2005 projections for the UK by the Advertising Association showed TV ad revenue growth as one of the weakest segments in the entire market. In contrast, internet advertising is the expected savior, contributing 1.3 percentage points to total industry growth of 4.2%, and Jupiter argues this gives the internet advertising players some considerable momentum and pricing power in 2005. Look at pages 47 - 50 of this report and marvel at the decline of TV as an activity, displaced by the internet - a process which seems to intensify with internet "maturity" levels of users.