Make it easy, toddlers will buy them

There is always first time for everything.  Today on our dinner table one of the topics was our son's online ebook purchase habit on my wife's Amazon Kindle.  Apparently he went ahead and bought a few ebooks from Amazon, most of them with lots of illustrations of trains and cars.  By the way my son is 28 months old.

Bed-time reading in 21 century;
Oh wait, does your mom know you bought that book?

My wife did not think that he bought those books.  She was thinking that somehow those ebooks were part of Amazon promotion of some sort.  That was until she spotted him ordering another ebook right on the dinner table.  Oops.

My immediate response was to ask my wife to figure out how to lock the Kindle so that he cannot go on buying spree each time he grabs a hold of the Kindle.  But then I started to think about how easy it must have been to order a new book so that even toddler can order a copy.  It must have been as easy as turning it on and point and click on the book that you want to buy.

This what we need on TV.  Buying and watching a TV program needs to be as easy as this.  I think that's how we'll solve SOPA problem.  If there is a way to find interesting content and an easy way to pay for them with a couple of clicks (let's make it toddler-resistant at least), I believe this SOPA won't even be an issue.  People will be buying and watching more content than they do today.

The biggest problem with TV industry (I think it's also true with movie industry) is their inertia.  They already have distribution channel, such as TV ads revenue from broadcasting, network syndication, movie theaters, etc. that work for them today.  They are the proven way of generating revenue, and I'm sure those TV and movie guys are thinking how to minimize the impact of this technology disruption brought on by tablets and hand-held devices to their core business model.  Once they realize that it's not about protecting their old model but embracing the new internet distribution channel then I think we'll start to see easier discovery and consumption of content.

Experience like the one Fred Wilson talked about on his blog a few days ago will and must be solved.  Content should be easy to discover.  Payment must be automated.  Viewing should be a couple of clicks away.  Seeing how Amazon and Apple is building very lucrative business on creating content store, I gotta believe someone will get this right soon.

The question is who will get it right for the next generation of entertainment consumers.  Make it easy enough for toddlers, they'll come and buy.