The future of television -- and the end of the mass market -- is already here. (It's just not evenly distributed.) Fascinating article in The New York Times Magazine about TiVo and Replay and their significance beyond being easier to use VCRs. They are actually a disruptive technology along the lines of Napster -- but with, potentially, even greater significance: "Without the television, there never would have been Tide or Rice Krispies or Alpo but a thousand versions of Tide and Rice Krispies and Alpo. This may not seem like a big deal to a user of Tide or Rice Krispies or Alpo, but to a manufacturer of Tide or Rice Krispies or Alpo it matters very much indeed. For the big brands, life without television is no life at all. Giant corporations whose sole purpose is to mass-market consumer goods exist in their current form because the television shaped the mass market. If television ceases to be a mass market, the mass market largely ceases to exist." Unlike the recording industry, however, the television industry has decided not to fight the inevitable: "There are a lot of explanations for why the networks have rushed to embrace their own creative destruction, most of them premised on the idiocy of network executives. Only one of these explanations is plausible: they feel they have no choice. 'If the networks could roll back the clock and prevent digital technology from ever happening, they'd do it,' says LeMasters of Replay. 'But how do you stop progress? We're offering them the chance to adapt.'"