Is TV already spinning in its grave?
I have long been blogging about the death of TV and I stopped that lately because in my view TV is already dead as a fish. You might look at me in disbelieve pointing to the million of couch potatoes who canīt stop to be brainwashed. Yet I tell ya the end of TV is coming near you next year and the final nail in the coffin no later then 2012. Except for older people who just can not use the intertubes everyone else will have moved online for their moving image fix at a time of their choosing for a topic they are choosing. I think the decline of the TV industry will accelerate with a rapid pace that has not been seen every before because even small declines mean way less money in the TV industry which then mean way less appealing programming (which is already at a point where 95% is unwatchable to people with a tiny bit of intelligence left) which leads to fewer viewers and an accelerating downward spiral. Big production studies understand nothing about how the interwebs work - or at least not enough to save their brands over to the new medium, which is ruled by semi-pros, amateurs, small scale companies embracing open and free - something a multimilliondollarcompany can never get their head around - even if they are the once who could finance a couple of years of open and free. Now there is no bussiness model out there except advertising that works for media companies and advertising on the web is either hold by google - which is still mico payment (something big companies are not overly interested in) - or nothing (because you loose users in droves once you start making extensive use of "tradtitional" advertising on your webshows). Then there is the whole remix thing together with creative commons - something larger companies will fight nail and tooth before they understand that they have to embrace it to be successful on the anarchyweb. The whole bussiness model of media distribution has to be rethought with bandwidth prices dropping bottom floor everyone can publish everything already without having to worry to pay more then their phone bill in the end of the month. At the moment some "pay as you go" models to download "popular" shows are working because the branding effect of TV is still huge but as time goes by and people are moving away from the boob tube the branding effect will wane and people are less inclined to watch this or the other show just because everyone else is literally forced to watch it because thats the only thing on at a specific time and all your friends and coworkers are talking about it.
At that point all media producers are created equal and then its about content and great stories and great concepts and other intriguing stuff that has been amiss in the media industry in the last decade.
The bussiness model will have to be rethought and a whole industry needs to become more artistic (as in starving artistic) brand building for companies will get harder (because 99% of the population will see a value in adblockers at one point and then there is no revenue for anyone) Some might donate a bit but overall there is a point in the tunnel where things change radically in my view - then again I could be wrong, right?
The New York Times writes about it too...