So how will change come about? Karp and Lyandres say it will happen when the content owners are forced to break their existing profitable model. This will only happen when enough people abandon expensive pay TV bundles to watch content online (a behavior termed “cord cutting”) and advertisers stop paying obscene amounts for TV ads. For cord cutting to become mainstream there needs to be a surge of quality content available outside of pay TV. (This is not happening yet: while Netflix and Hulu are doing well, pay TV subscriptions are not declining.)

Simultaneously, the bundling of pay TV with broadband Internet would need to be less attractive (this bundling is controlled by the MSOs who own “the last mile.”) But something will trigger it. With music the trigger was the transition from discs to MP3s and the rapid rise in piracy that allowed Apple to innovate. But the important takeaway from the iPod revolution is the reminder that when these changes do happen, they happen fast.