When Napster came along, the enormous consumer, pent-up aggravation over years of being financially screwed by the record industry lead consumers in droves to pirate the individual songs the like.

It took almost a decade but the music industry has started to adapt to their customer’s desire to purchase only the individual songs they wish to purchase.

As hard drive comes down (Brent linked to a terabyte drive for $75 yesterday) and bandwidth goes up, Bittorrent is making it increasingly easier for consumers to access just the TV shows they want. The thinking? Why subscribe to an entire channel, let alone consumer unfriendly bundles of channels when the desired product can be had directly and, for now, for free.

At some point the broadcasters will get it. They’ll adapt – because they’ll have to. They will find a business model that will yield quality programming, sold to consumer at fair prices, in a manner that does not require the consumer to purchase bundles of channels (analogous to record albums) full of content they do not want.

Some people still purchase full albums. Lots do. For people like them, they can still subscribe to channels or access content via the subscription model Mari enjoys.

For the rest, the individual purchase of songs, TV shows and movies will be the order of the day.

Will this require entrenched business models to change. Will this cause disruption for the MSOs? You bet. But its coming. There will always be a market for the subscription model the way you like it – great! For you there’s the Zune and music subscriptions. For people like me their’s the iPhone and pay-as-you go songs.

The two models can co-exist and everyone can make money with great content. They are not mutually exclusive as you somehow seem to believe.

…Dale

Because you will pay more not to subsidize it.