3-D TV Is Cable's Last Chance to Fight Off Internet Video

ESPN announced this week that it is launching a 3-D sports channel. If other cable networks know what's good for them, they'll follow suit as soon as possible.

Everyone knows that over the last decade or so, a digital tidal wave has replaced postal mail with e-mail, landlines with cell phones, and home newspaper delivery with news Web sites. Cable networks seem not to realize that they're next in line. The basic rule is this: people born after 1980 want fewer pipes coming into their homes, and they want fine-grained choice about the media they consume. The more stuff we can get over the one pipe we do want—the Internet—the better. To those who buy individual tracks off iTunes for 99 cents apiece, and who pay Netflix $9 per month to stream unlimited movies, the practice of forking over more than $100 per month to the cable company for an undifferentiated mess of mostly crappy channels is insane.

So why does anyone born after 1980 still pay for cable? That brings me to ESPN 3-D. For me, the only reason is sports. Mad Men, 30 Rock—if I canceled, I could still get these shows on iTunes and Hulu, and save a truckload of money while doing so. (One writer for The New York Times who cut the cable cord estimates he pockets $1,600 a year.) But sports, delivered live and in large-format HD—that's something the Internet is not yet capable of.

That's why it's key that ESPN is staying ahead of the curve and offering sports in 3-D. Anyone who has seen James Cameron's in that format will attest that 3-D video deserves its hype, that the quality of the experience really is that good. Making the visuals more awesome, to use a highly technical term, is the only way to compete with what video delivered over the Internet offers in choice, convenience, portability, and cost. I would love, love, love to ditch my cable payment. But I would also love to see Alex Ovechkin tearing down the ice in three dimensions.

So the 3-D channels are coming. Discovery, Sony, and IMAX also announced yesterday that they will jointly create a 3-D channel, possibly launching as soon as the end of 2010. Expect other networks to follow. If they want to keep getting our dollars, they'll have to.