Jeff Jarvis writes:
TV networks will not die. But neither will they grow - and in business, isn't that as good as dying? Their audiences have been steadily falling away for a decade. Network ad revenue is now flat and a host of new gadgets compete for viewers' attention.
Yet it's not technology that ultimately will challenge big media's monopoly. It's the audience who will do that, for now they - or rather, we - can produce, distribute, and market our own content at a cost media giants cannot beat. Three important developments come together now to make this possible:
· Thanks to new tools, anyone can make a show. Just as blogging liberated publishing, cheap gadgets and ever- easier software can turn anyone into a broadcaster.
· The internet enables us to distribute what we make to the world. No longer do we have to beg the guy who owns the broadcast tower for time.
· We can now market via links. That is how some blogs have built audiences the size of midsize newspapers'. That is how podcasts and vlogs (video blogs) will grow.
There is the real revolution in media: The one-way pipe that was broadcasting is giving way to an open pool that everyone owns, where anyone can play. The end of the network era isn't just about losing audience or revenue or profits. It's really about losing control.
thro' emergic