• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, May 17, 2012

OMMA Video programming chair Cathy Taylor kicked today’s show off with a personal anecdote many of us can relate to.

“The gods must have known that I was going to be emceeing this conference, because Cablevision finally made good on its threat to make my little kitchen TV inoperable unless I put a digital cable box on it,” she said, adding, “It’s a teeny kitchen. I don’t want a digital cable box on it.”

Taylor wasn’t stymied for long, because when she mentioned it to a friend, the friend said, why don’t you download Cablevision’s iPad app and watch it on your iPad. She did. A few days later, she saw a commercial – presumably on Cablevision – to download an app to watch TV on her laptop too.

“All of a sudden, two-thirds of the TVs in our house are computers,” she said, adding, “As a media person, you sit there and thing, ‘What does this mean?’”

Among other things, Taylor noted, it means that “Cablevision is leap-frogging their own technology.” For another thing, she said, “It’s a pretty weird time.”

You know, as Hunter S. Thompson once said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Well, Taylor is one of the best pros I know covering the media business, so she’s the best one to turn to to guide us through what this all means. As they used to say in the video, er TV, business, stay tuned.