Many  of us would love to get rid of our cable TV provider.  The cost is out-of-whack high and – with the availability of digital and mobile television – cable is fast becoming irrelevant.

A Belkin and Harris survey of many disgruntled cable customers predicts that those who view at least one television show per month over the Internet will grow sharply.  The Internet-as-TV users had been chugging along at 6.9 percent growth rate, but this firm forecasts that those rates will jump to  37 percent in four years. By next year, more than half of all Internet users will be watching on Internet-capable devices.

What to do if you’re Time Warner Cable or Comcast?

Get in the game.

Time Warner Cable, for example, offers an app to watch TV channels based on subscriptions, but it limits customers to home-use only.  Beyond that, it offers no on-demand option so customers may view live shows. Worse, the number channels is limited because many networks have their own apps.

Basically, the Hulus and Netflixes of the world are grabbing market share from cable because cable television clings to an outdated model.

If the established cabled providers don’t innovate, they will fail. The upside? We’ll finally be able to cut that cable television cord.

It seems that Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, is quietly in talks with cable companies in a possible attempt to add the Netflix service as an add-on to cable. The move, which would give Netflix greater reach and would give cable providers an additional bundling element in their line-up, might appear to be a win-win on paper. But the effect on the Netflix brand would not be a positive – nor is it the right step in aligning with the future of delivering content.

In any discussion I have had with friends and colleagues, I have yet to find someone who speaks highly of their cable service. The service is never great, the prices are too high, you are not able to pay only for the content you want and you have little control. In addition, cable represents the “middle man” between the creator of content and us. With streaming video (HBO GO, any one?), cable companies are nearing extinction.

Netflix was wise when it initially focused on DVDs and it was even wiser when it made the transition to instant streaming.

The biggest hurdle for Netflix is that, even though there is a lot of content it streams, the content is too incomplete. You still need to supplement Netflix with cable, satellite or another streaming service like Hulu. Its focus should be on closing this gap, not bridging it. When I go to Best Buy, I often have a hard time killing time browsing. I used to be able to that with ease. Now, though, there is just a lot of obsolete space. I have no interest in browsing the CD collection or DVD collection, which consumes most of the middle of its stores. I have seen the future in digital and have no use for hard copies anymore. This is my feeling about cable. I have tasted instant streaming, be it ESPN3, Netflix, Hulu, or iTunes, and streaming tastes oh so much better.

Apple famously is quick to do away with outdated technology before the rest of the industry (removing the diskette drive, adopting USB, avoiding Flash).  It always stays current and ahead of the curve because it is the one making the curve. (In Walter Isaacson’s book, Steve Jobs, Jobs said consumers don’t know what they want next until they have it.) Netflix must do the same. I don’t want to have another reason to remain with my cable provider. I want someone to give me a way out.

With the advent of smart TVs, game consoles, and set-top boxes, all connecting to streaming services, Netflix‘s ability to reach the market will continue to sufficiently expand without having to align with cable providers. If you lay with dogs, you will wake up with fleas. Remember this Netflix, because my cable provider is covered in them.

We’ve discussed the impending death of cable and satellite TV before, but there’s now another nail in the coffin. AT&T is announcing that the iPhone will now have an app that allows you to watch TV from your phone (and, eventually, I suspect, from your iPad).

There are already apps that allow you to do this sort of thing, including Hulu Plus, but this announcement is just another wave of innovation that will eventually lead consumers to completely controlling when and where they watch TV, and gain the kind of control the music and radio industry lost with the iPod.

I bring this up because the cable and satellite TV industry can overcome this, but there are numerous examples of brands that fail to do so. And the reason is because they tied their brands directly to the technology or services they provide. That is, they didn’t establish a brand that is reflection of the consumer: Who they are when they use the brand and what they aspire to be.

Think of it this way. The cable TV industry and its market leaders Time Warner and Comcast built their brands around the technology and even price. So when DirecTV and the Dish Network came along, offering what seemed to be better technology (or at least the appearance of it along with the appearance of greater choice) and lower prices, they made inroads into the cable market share and it’s been a bloody battle ever since.

Now, when that technology is threatened and the content developers can skip the middleman, even the satellite companies are doomed. The lesson: If you base your brand on product benefits and not as a reflection of your customer, you’re living on borrowed time.

I know you’re not supposed to say I told you so, but we did.

The news today that Google is setting out to revolutionize television is unsurprising to those who understand what brands have permission and which don’t to innovate in the minds of consumers.

But there are two other thoughts I’ve had about this announcement. The first is what we’ve said before: The cable and satellite TV companies have to be very nervous, because now the content providers have a way to cut out the middleman that charges too much and wants too much.

Think of the NFL Network, certainly a niche channel but one that’s growing and feeds into a viewership that’s attractive to advertisers. The network has been battling with Time Warner Cable for years on fees, which is why the two parties have yet to come to an agreement.

Now, with this Google announcement, networks like those can see the future. They can just ride past the Time Warners and Comcasts of the world.

Another thought popped into my head, along with the announcement of the Google-enhanced Android phone. The only brand in position to challenge Google on both fronts is Apple.

If that happens, then you are talking about a fascinating clash of brand titans.

A few weeks back I blogged about how streaming the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on my computer made me re-think the importance of cable and satellite TV. (Read that blog here.) Yesterday, Ben Patterson, a technology writer for Yahoo! News, wrote an article about just such a movement.

“Nearly 800,000 U.S. TV households ‘cut the cord,’ report says.”

This phenomenon is interesting enough to be newsworthy. But the brand implications are more far reaching.  What does this mean to the DIRECTTV, DISH Network, COMCAST, Time Warner or Cablevision brands? It is an earth shattering change.

We preach the importance of defining your brand, not by the process by which you deliver your product or service, but rather by the customer self-definition when they choose or use your brand. This means that what you deliver and how you deliver the brand is less important than  who the customer believes themselves to be when they use it.

For the broadcast industry of service providers (and I am purposefully including cable and satellite providers in this group because how I receive my entertainment and news is immaterial to me), this means they need to re-think their current business models in relation to their evolving brand (if they have a brand at all).

Who has the courage to look down this scary path? I’m not sure. None have called me yet and asked for help. Sure, it is a scary thought for them because it means they may have to give up half a loaf of bread today so that they might keep a full loaf later.

How will you know which one of these companies are willing to look at the market and adapt right now to these changes even if it means giving up some revenue in the short term? Easy. They will be the one survivor in a field of new providers five years from now.

Don’t believe me? Just remember that Blockbuster tried in vain to hold onto video rentals when the means by which we used the technology changed. They were in the prime position to own the new market of downloadable content, but they did not want to sacrifice their current revenue stream and the investment they had made in real estate.  I could go on and on. But will leave you with one last word. AOL.

So, here I am at my desk, writing a white paper on business-to-business branding and I am streaming the first round of the NCAA tournament game between Villanova and Robert Morris on my second monitor. I chose to view it in high quality.

Amazing. CBS is broadcasting this game over the Internet (as well as the other games on at the same time) and the picture and sound quality is much better than the same game that I used to watch at home before I bought my HDTV a few years back.

If it is possible with current bandwidth to deliver this kind of quality over the Internet why has no one put together a programming package that I can stream directly to the Mac mini I have connected via HDMI to my flat screen at home?  Why do I still have to subscribe to Time Warner Cable for my viewing choices when the Internet offers me greater choice (like any game I wish to watch) at a quality that satisfies my HD desires?

Efficiencies in the market always win in the long run and I believe that today I am witnessing the beginning of the end to satellite and cable television packages. Make no mistake about it. Time Warner, Comcast and or Direct TV could grab this model and own it, but I doubt they will. They will continue to sell “cable” or “satellite” because they are stuck on a delivery system (a process) and not the purpose that drives behavior — my desire for content.

Had Blockbuster realized the same type of opportunity that now exists in streaming TV, they would still be closing stores but they would also be adding customers. The efficiency of the delivery system has changed but Blockbuster has been in love with how they delivered the content not what they delivered.

This is the swan song for cable TV and satellite providers. Do they know it?