The recent changes at HBO, the once and still juggernaut of premium cable, underscore how profound the disruption to the traditional television distribution model is going to be. We know that Netflix, along with Amazon and Hulu, have taught younger generations that the default way to access content is "over the top", rather than the increasingly outmoded cable box. But that's just the beginning. The reason AT&T bought Time Warner, and with it HBO, last year and Disney is completing its merger with Fox (and the reason you saw so many ads for the CBS All Access platform this past Super Bowl), is not just the emerging primacy of OTT, but the soon-to- be primacy of mobile. That's the billion-dollar bet Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman are making with Quibi, the potentially transformative short-form mobile-first subscription platform that launches in early 2020. Within a year, the content landscape is going to be looking *very* different than it does now.
