TiVo CEO Tom Rogers has announced that, after 10 years, he will be stepping down on Jan. 31, the end of TiVo's fiscal year. TiVo has been struggling to compete in a DVR market that not only includes a proliferation of similar products, but is also evolving in a direction that may eventually result in all DVRs becoming obsolete.
Rogers, who will remain with the company as non-executive chairman of the board, proclaimed in a statement that: "TiVo is a great company today — and I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of turning it around and building it from its DVR roots into the leader in providing next-generation TV in the United States and around the world," adding that "the Board and I agreed that this was an opportune time to seamlessly transition to a new leadership team."
There once was a time when the name TiVo was synonymous with the DVR. The innovative company helped pioneer the development and proliferation of digital video recording in the U.S. The company debuted its service in 1999, and thanks to its post-modern hardware, its remote design and extremely intuitive and user-friendly UI, TiVo captured the imagination of the TV-viewing public — many of whom switched from recording their favorite shows to "TiVo-ing" them.
TiVo's domination of the DVR market didn't last long, however, as cable companies caught on to the potential of integrating DVR capabilities into customer set-top boxes and bundling the associated service. Although no DVR user interface came close to rivaling TiVo's ingeniously simple and understandable platform, many consumers switched away from TiVo's separate DVR service with standalone hardware and a standalone bill.
Now, TiVo faces additional competition from cord-cutting viewers who are using streaming sticks and set-top boxes manufactured by Roku, Amazon, Google and others to watch TV without subscribing to cable at all. A recent study by Forrester Research showed that almost one in four adults in the U.S. is not paying for TV anymore.
Still, the company has managed to survive by constantly innovating and maintaining its core niche market, which currently stands at a little over two million U.S. subscribers (around half of its 2006 peak), along with more overseas. The company has been betting on its latest technology to induce both users and content providers currently supplying other DVRs to their customers to give TiVo a second look.
TiVo recently introduced new features in its latest DVR, the TiVo Bolt, which allow viewers to watch their favorite shows faster. SkipMode technology skips commercials, while QuickMode technology allows programming to be sped up with no video or audio distortion, according to the company.
Whether the introduction of these new innovations has been successful should become clear when the company's latest earnings report is announced on Nov. 24. The company's stock has lost a third of its value in the past year, and while Rogers insists his departure is unrelated, one can't help but wonder about the timing, which may foreshadow more disappointing financial results.
