The division between the newsroom and advertising sales worked in a scarcity model but fails when the advertising disappears.

One thing we forget is that back in the Ed Sullivan days, marketing was front and center all of the time when advertisers were learning how to use the medium. I think that is the model we will be going back to.

The assumption that the information is becoming less “reliable and deep” is false. The real change is that we’re discovering how unreliable and shallow media is/was. Since the perceived value is going down, so is what we’re willing to pay for it.

While I understand that some folks would prefer to get the same money for the same old swill, the world doesn’t actually owe them the living that they’d like to have, even if someone else got it.

The distribution monopoly hid many problems. Now that it’s going away, you can hide them somewhere else, fix them, or deal with their consequences. Actually, no matter what you do, the consequences will happen.

Whinging about consequences isn’t likely to have much effect on the bottom line.

Sure, consumer control is a wonderful thing. But if none of us pay for information, how reliable and deep will that information become, over time? Just because advertisers no longer need the media as ‘middleman,’ doesn’t mean we’ll want an e-mail box stuffed full of warm greetings from Q-tip and diaper sellers.

Sometimes we don’t want a ‘relationship.’ We just want to buy stuff. Or know what’s going on, from someone paid well enough to dig it up and present it from a non-slanted perspective.

No, not a curmudgeon. Just some contrarian thoughts about how wonderful this Brave New World of Googlism will be. Sometimes, wrenching change leaves good things behind.

http://www.zilliontv.tv/

It is about time that we the consumers gain control of what we want to watch and that we are no longer forced to buy bundles we do not care for (see Jeff’s WWGD..)

Oh and no, I have no vested interest on Zillions, unfortunately

The biggest trend I see is that many TV networks and content owners, are avoiding the gatekeepers and doing directly to consumers. Why have a middle man? Why have a reseller? The Internet and digital entertainment is taking this content from gatekeepers and taking away their power. Now, consumers have more power.

New gatekeepers, like Apple iTunes and NetFlix and Vudu are coming on board. And they’re changing everything.

And try finding HD radios in this town, under that name. It’s not just broadcasters, but the industry as a whole who royally flubbed this situation. If you must introduce something new, at least have some idea what you’re going to use it for.

Broadcast tv and radio will be around into the future. Not everybody wants to get everything over cable after all. As wifi spreads expect micro-broadcast to expand. Low power stations distributed through a wifi net, and picked up by low gain receivers. With the right connections you’ll be able to pick up a 20 watt small town high school station two time zones away. And likely on something powered entirely by the signal, much as the old crystal sets were.

Somebody will come along who knows what they’re doing, and a mostly dead enterprise will be revived again. But don’t expect the old parties back, for they don’t even know how to go through the pockets for loose change.

1) initially provide a valuable distribution service
2) build an industry so large that it seems to have created its own environment in which to thrive
3) ignore the rapidly-evolving alternative distribution models
4) lobby policy makers to alter the rules in an attempt to prop up your waining competitiveness/monopoly
5) (optional) sue and/or tax any (ex)customers that are unwilling to pay you any longer
6) make a half-baked attempt at using the new distribution channel without really letting go of the dream of reviving the decaying remnants of the cash-cow that once was
7) drive the once powerful, profitable, and valuable business into the ground–simultaneously erasing shareholder value, incensing your once-loyal customers, and enacting legislation that will likely gum up the larger economic engine for decades
finally die

Is there anything we can do to speed the whole thing up or at least make it tougher for the dying to waste anyone’s resources but their own?

http://www.youngbroadcasting.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=76078&p=irol-sec

-tgd