Something is happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. So I thought I would contribute some analysis to increase the unease of the TV community and encourage beleaguered bloggers. Although most Internet users sense intuitively that the balance of media power is shifting rapidly away from broadcast media in favor of interactive media, little coherent thought has been devoted to the causes of the shift and the likely consequences.
We are witnessing the birth on the public Internet of what I call NeTV, video that is interwoven with interactive content for entertainment, news, and education. Click and learn why NeTV will crush TV:
1. Capability Superset: Anthing you can do I can do better!
As YouTube is beginning to show, TV media are a subset of the Internet. Sure, MSM TV has a temporary quality advantage, because their advertising budgets pay for nice production values and they own a lot of broadcast bandwidth, but as advertisers follow the eyeballs moving to the net, and as fiber-optic broadband reaches more consumers, NeTV will wipe out broadcast and cable TV. One need only view the feeble attempts of TV programs to broadcast selected emails to see that TV can't be interactive.
2. Semiotic democracy: Look Ma, my clip is on Drudge!
We are returning to the origins of culture, after centuries of concentrating image and myth-making in the hands of priestly and professional elites. On NeTV, any educated person can make video. Whistleblowers, cranks, messiahs, horny teens, ANYBODY can make video. Give people a taste of making their own media, and they love it. There is no going back to sitting down and shutting up.
3. Storage abundance: Everything's on my nPod!
A funny thing happened on the road of Moore's law: storage became nearly infinite. Terabyte hard drives will be shipping at consumer prices within a year. That means 500 full-length feature films will fit on one computer. The same thing is happening to bandwidth. The capital-intensive base of the TV industry is m-e-l-t-i-n-g. Oh, what a world!
4. Recombinant culture: All your bytes are belong to us!
Wrangling over the ownership of video content is turning into a gordian knot of nonsense as the world gradually realizes that it is deeply satisfying to make new things out of the ocean of beautiful bytes accessible on the net. After banging their heads against the wall for a few more decades, content creators will abandon the notion of chaining down every byte that has ever been created as private property.
5. Civilized culture: Building a better beast!
As George Gilder pointed out in the "Death of Television" People who consume broadcast media become anxious, isolated, and afraid. People who participate in interactive media become engaged and educated. In short, the long depletion of social capital caused by TV will be reversed by NeTV.
In summary, TV is a dead medium squawking. Network advertising sales have gone flatline, as viewership in the prime demographic bands has begun to decline. It's all over but the shouting and migration to Internet servers. TV is dead; long live NeTV!