or all those of us brought up on good old Doordarshan of 20-year-plus vintage in watching television, the statement above should warrant a case of d�j� vu. It was a seller's market � the fact that the transmission was stalled while the final three overs of a cricket match were on, was of no consequence. We stayed glued to our TV sets, waiting for dear old Dr Narottam Puri to take us through the last stages yet again, and if that time was lost as well, you just had to wait for the news update to learn what happened.

In today's world of lowered consumer patience, the message just wouldn't work. Big deal if you are sorry, bad luck mate, I'm zipping to the next channel or the next website or the next what-have-you for the same information. It is now the world of 'On-demand', as IBM puts it in their ads. The consumer, to repeat a trite truism, is king. How, then, do the 'content-providers' work with this new breed, given that they come from the same breed themselves as consumers? ... more