At least in the US, your TV carriers don't own the channels. In Canada, the comm companies own all the TV channels, making mobile TV unfeasible because you have to subscribe to XYZ's mobile service to get their TV channels on a mobile device like an iPad. If you want all the channels, you'd be subscribing to all of the mobile carriers and changing your SIM all the time, because on a device like an iPad, you can only use mobile TV over cellular, not on WiFi....and then you have to deal with overage charges because the data caps are designed to be a money pit that favours the mobile ops. You can't watch US TV directly because when the US TV networks offer their TV shows to Canada, they sell the shows to Canadian TV networks who also claim exclusive distribution rights in Canada. So a TV show like American Idol is sold from Fox to CTV in Canada, and CTV claims the right to be the exclusive broadcaster of that show ANYWHERE in Canada. Fox doesn't keep any broadcast rights for that in Canada at all. So if a service like Hulu would like to enter the Canadian market, they would have to go to CTV, Global, Shaw Media, Rogers, etc., and re-purchase broadcast rights for all of the US shows they might want to show in Canada - if the Canadian network wants to sell them those rights. This is true of every country. Part of this reason is because your government favours your national TV and communication networks over foreign entities, so they'll make up laws that say that the national network needs to include so much domestic content (like the CRTC does) that it makes it near impossible for a foreign network to enter your market.