Television celebrates its centenary today — one hundred years since John Logie Baird’s first live TV demonstration in London in January 1926. From those flickering images to today’s ultra‑thin, networked screens, TV has evolved through broadcast, multichannel, digital and IP eras to become a global medium shaping culture, politics and daily life. Yet the transformation now underway promises greater disruption than the previous century combined.

RedSquid describes 2026–2036 as the age of cognitive television — where fast fibre broadband and in‑device AI enable entirely new forms of home entertainment. Most current industry debates focus on using AI to do existing things faster and cheaper. But the real impact will come from enabling new experiences never imagined before.

A critical question is where the AI processing sits. While much attention is on generative AI in the cloud, the equally profound change will come from small AI models running directly inside the TV. Edge AI capabilities will make it possible to personalise storylines, enable cloud gaming, volumetric sports, mixed‑reality watch parties and new ad formats — all running natively on the big screen. The TV will become the household’s primary edge AI node, shifting value to whoever owns the intelligence layer between viewer and screen.  RedSquid demos at CES this year showed the TV programme being modified as it was being watched.  An industry first.

As the modern television merges fully with the internet, control has begun to shift from broadcasters and Pay‑TV operators to smart TV platform owners. Losing this control would be catastrophic for Europe’s media and telecoms industries, eroding telcos’ differentiation in broadband. Yet two powerful trends — the rise of in‑device AI and the move from aerial to broadband delivery — could return that power to Europe’s broadcasters, telcos and content makers if they act fast.

This decade marks television’s “iPhone moment.” Just as smartphones redefined telephony through software and intelligence, cognitive TV will transform the screen into an adaptive, conversational environment connecting content, commerce, communication and the connected home.

For content creators this creates new opportunities and threats.  Get involved and lead the cognitive content era, or let someone else take the lead on that!

For telcos and media groups, this is both an existential threat and an extraordinary opportunity. By embracing and leading the cognitive television era, telcos can become the next generation of industry leaders.

The lesson from Nokia’s fall is clear: knowing disruption is coming is not enough — acting in time is what defines who leads next.

For those who want to know more, a White Paper is available on RedSquid Website.

About RedSquid AI-TV

Today we have Smart-TV. The next step is AI-TV. RedSquid team members were the driving force behind the worlds Smart-TV. Now we formed RedSquid to create AI TV that can play interactive TV programmes and movies.