Its biggest competitor in the interactive program-guide business — one of the most lucrative of cable enterprises — has been tied up in court defending patents, and other companies who tried to enter the business have shut down or moved on.
A world in which every film studio and television station has its own proprietary offering sounds like a bit of a nightmare — worse even than the most convoluted of cable plans.
Asked by Williams about his television watching habits, Obama says he doesn't generally watch the cable news shoes: "Mainly because I don't find most of the cable chatter very persuasive.
"Most of the cable networks are seeing erosion that outpaces reduction in subscriber levels to cable services - we're seeing the rise of the skinny bundle.
The spike subsided relatively quickly for most of the cable news channels, but not for HLN, which had covered the trial exhaustively for more than a month.
"If most of these cable shows were on broadcast TV, people would say we're totally striking out," Mr. Beckman said.
It is undoubtedly true, as Mr. Kemp wrote to me, that he never watches most of the cable channels that come into his house.
Hip or not, Mr. Diller's HSN is available on most of the cable systems in the United States, while BuyTV has not reached a single living room yet.
The limited nature of her duties is shown by a plaintive memo she sent him after her first year complaining that most of the cable traffic she was allowed to see concerned room reservations for congressional delegations.
