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Billions of TV Channels Are Coming to You

According to the Hollywood Reporter, entertainment executives agreed that it is the independent producers and creators with emerging technologies at their disposal who now have distribution advantages over the traditional studios and networks.

That was the underlying sentiment behind this year's Independent Film & Television Alliance production conference held at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The confab addressed topics ranging from advertising, mobile and video-on-demand to the blurring of the technological platforms in a new-media world.

"Our investment now is the highest it's every been -- it's now totally about how much can we produce," keynote speaker and chairman and CEO of Entertainment Studios Byron Allen said. "If it ends up being a billion channels, there will be a billion channels."

If we end up with a billion channels of content, then I vote for a re-design of the pitiful cable TV electronic program guide (EPG). There's no way that I can imagine 'paging down' through that volume of linear or VOD programming descriptions. Moreover, we clearly don't need another solution that's focused on 'searching' for content; what we need is one that's focused on 'finding' content. It's really not the same thing -- think about it.

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