From Variety: Challenges for TiVo

It'll be interesting to see what announcements TiVo has at next week's Consumer Electronics Show... in writing this piece for Variety, it was hard to find someone outside the company with a kind word to say.

The gist of the piece:

In its most recent quarterly report, TiVo counted 4.4 million subscribers -- out of an estimated 16 homes that now use digital video recorders.

"TiVo is becoming a classic business school case study," says Steve Frankel, an analyst who follows the Silicon Valley company for the investment bank Cannacord Adams. "They invented the category of DVRs, and they didn't capitalize on it. They're definitely foundering, trying to find a way to be a healthy standalone business."

But CEO Tom Rogers, a former NBC exec who took the reins in mid-2005, says the company is making progress.

"I think a lot of people were counting TiVo out a year ago, but we've made a lot of strides," Rogers says. "We've gone from being an island, in people's view, into a collaborative company that wants to have partnerships with all kinds of media players."