Influx

Being a broadcaster today is a bit like staring in a zombie movie; as you fight off one, another emerges from behind the corner to surprise you.

Such is the case with China’s TVU , a free media player for PCs capable of receiving up to 50 channels for free including most of the ones that people pay their cable company for.

The player started to gain traction in the US during this year’s World Cup, when soccer fans used it to watch matches that weren’t being covered by the major networks.

Under US law, it took the music industry a ton of time and effort to bring down the peer-to-peer players like Napster. This one could be tougher, given Chinese copyright law is virtually non-existent.

With the business shifting so dramatically, this shows just how hard it is to plan for the future, as Sir Martin Sorrell was quick to point out the other day.

“The technology bit is much more difficult — figuring out what the devil is going to happen in technology. I am sure that there are four or five very bright Chinese engineers in some garage in Shanghai who are coming up the next Google.” He underscored the point by noting that “there are 465,000 engineering graduates a year coming out of China as opposed to 65,000 here in the U.S.”

Clearly, Sorrell had already heard about TVU.