Naturally, there were plenty of pundits and industry watchers who were quick to declare this latest development the beginning of the end of cable TV as we know it.
Nearly every time either was asked whether people wanted to pay for a device and pay a radio subscription fee on top of that, they countered that the same doubts were there at the beginning of cable TV and that the same thing that premium cable did to broadcast was happening with radio.
With NTL renamed Virgin Media in a blaze of publicity at the beginning of this year, cable company bosses hoped Branson's brand name would help transform a business that had struggled to make money since first digging up the roads two decades ago.
Double crochet across the beginning of your cable row.
And at the beginning of the war, network and cable coverage of the invasion drove some viewers to switch to the BBC, complaining that American news organizations were too jingoistic and intimidated by the Bush administration.
Oprah Winfrey stood before cable company executives at an industry conference last month and admitted that the beginning of OWN, her cable channel, was not going well, in part because she had been too focused on the end of her daytime talk show.
Soon after, it began making larger financial demands of the cable and satellite providers, like Comcast and DirectTV, that carry the network.
It's an old complaint that dates back to the beginning of cable's hegemony over awards season that's about as musty as lamentations about not being able to curse or show nudity.
The crew at the bow began coiling in the cables of the carriers and cutters and Flemish crafts; they drew sails to the top, they tended the tiller, they stood along the starboard singing their shanties.
"Comcast and much of the cable industry began providing movies and TV programming on demand years ago, because consumers want to watch movies and TV programming when and where they want it," she said.
The other problem is that digital set top boxes could also begin to erode the market share of the cable modem.
