Seriously, let’s stop using it. This word sounds so optimistic in its spin on what is happening in the television business these days. This label, seemingly extracted from some business school lecture, promises lofty, futuristic goals. As those who appreciate words and have used them for a decent living for some five decades, we fully understand why certain words become popular in a given moment. They can provide optimism and solace at the same time. Inspiration and consolation in equal doses.

But when a word becomes an overused canard to distract from what is really going on, the word loses its meaning in short order. Eventually, it becomes a blunt instrument to dull the senses and fill the void of fear with a grand-sounding promise.

As Shakespeare put it best in Macbeth (the Bard did have a unique way with words of all stripes), this one word would indeed be “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

We should probably stop our rant here briefly and point out that we are not referring to the other “T Word” of the moment–that being tariffs.

No, our complaint here is against the word we heard so many use at the recent NAB Show in Las Vegas. But as soon as it slipped from their lips, they most quickly apologized because they realized the word’s original meaning had been perverted by the dark underbelly of commerce.

It is only 14 letters long, but hearing it in the context of the promise of new technology that will radically shift a business means that a seemingly endless number of good and talented people will lose their jobs in the blink of an eye, with little warning and even less hope to follow.

And that word would be transformation.

Why are we so opposed to this one word? As we noted earlier, it is a word that suggests something more than what, in fact, is really happening. We hear it from leaders in all walks of business, but for us, it just rings hollow when we hear “The Television business is transforming.” Well, of course it is. The television business has been changing since it was created either at the hands of Philo T. Farnsworth or Vladimir Zworykin, or perhaps by the pioneering work of John Logie Baird or Kenjiro Takayanagi.

Even the story of how television came to be has changed over the years. That’s how much change the whole medium of television has seen in the past century since its invention.

And how much has television changed? From a mechanical-based version that used spinning discs to the electronic version that captured and displayed monochrome images using specialized vacuum tubes. From those tubes to transistors and on to semiconductors. From black and white to color. From those early, hulking, gigantic cameras requiring multiple people to move about to ones that can fit in your pocket. And the list goes on and on. As the lawyers would say, let’s stipulate that change is in the very nature of television, both in its execution–and its effect on our lives.

We can almost hear you asking, “Isn’t transformation just a fancier-sounding version of change?”

The dictionary defines transformation as “a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance.” To some degree, the question is an accurate summation. But in current day usage, we hear “The T word” as part of the same _lingua franca _ as the HR approved alternatives like “restructuring, downsizing, rightsizing” and the other current darling of the moment, “efficiency.”

Unfortunately, too many colleagues know firsthand that when the conversation turns to transforming any business, it really means how much money can be saved, typically by needing fewer people to do the necessary work to produce each aspect of a business. And television of all sorts, under the various acronyms of OTA, OTT, FAST, CTV, MVPD, ATSC, and ad infinitum, is still–first and foremost–a business.

Whatever the technology of the minute may be, it is far too evident from scanning countless LinkedIn posts that there is a continuing human cost to all of this transformation. We’d propose at least acknowledging that toll with a small bit of compassion by ditching the consultant-speak to properly acknowledge the proverbial elephant in the room: change.

And yes, the fact remains that “Change is Hard.” It always has been.

Television is in the midst of a fight for what its future will look like. There have been real-life casualties due to the continuing changes that some might see approaching a crisis. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and author from New Mexico, writes the best thing we have read about transformation: “True transformation is the process of letting go. The word ‘change’ normally refers to new beginnings. But transformation…more often happens not when something new begins–but when something old falls apart.”

Thus, our call to ditch “The T Word” and perhaps focus more on helping people cope with the latest in a business that has always been, not so ironically, about change. As Shakespeare put it earlier in the soliloquy mentioned above from Macbeth:

“There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”