Firstly, we had music file sharing, which hasn’t gone away by any means despite the rather desperate attempts of the RIAA and the quaintly named BPI to bully customers through the courts.
Then we had the MPAA shutting down sites using Bit Torrent to distribute legitimate files and some of their member’s films.
Now apparently TV execs are wetting themselves as it seems programmes are making it out there too.
The New York Times (via Emergic) writes:
Millions of viewers are now watching illegal copies of television programs – even full seasons copied from popular DVD’s – that are flitting about the Internet, thanks to other new programs that allow users to upload and download the large files quickly. And entrepreneurial souls are busily concocting even newer applications, including one that searches the Internet for illegal copies of any television shows you may desire and automatically downloads them to your computer.
Not surprisingly, the repercussions – particularly the rapidly growing number of shows available for the plucking online – terrify industry executives, who remember only too well what Napster and other file-sharing programs did to the music industry. They fret that if unchecked, rampant trading of files will threaten the riches of the relatively new and surprisingly lucrative television DVD business. It could endanger sales of television shows to international markets and into syndication. And it could further endanger what for the past 50 years has been television’s economic linchpin: the 30-second commercial.
Unfortunately, the 30-second commercial has actually expired, it’s just that no one has actually noticed it. It’s been killed off by market forces that are impossible to resist – TiVo and the web are part of it, sure.
But advertisers are starting to switch budgets heavily to online now. New research from Starcom shows online growing at 52%. Why? It’s accountable, targeted and affordable, even for the smallest businesses. It’s opened up the long tail of advertisers and no one knows how big that untapped market actually is.
Other news on the media. Rupert Murdoch, famously sceptical about “new” media has gathered his top management to work out a new strategy for the internet. He can smell the money shifting and clearly wants a slice of the new pie. As probably the best strategic media man of the last 100 years (no matter what else one thinks of his style of business), this is an important indicator.
I wonder if blogging will be on the agenda? Not so for Michael Wolff, acerbic New Yorker columnist and writer of the classic Burn Rate and the interesting, but inconclusive Autumn of the Moguls. I think it was inconclusive as he’s too close to his subject (the collpase of media) and failed to see what’s actually happening to the media he was writing about.
Here’s how BuzzMachine reported a recent speech about blogging:
At some point in the ’50s Truman Capote was asked about Jack Kerouac, and he said, “That’s not writing, that’s typing,” which is to some degree how I feel about blogs. I even hate saying the word blog. I hate being forced to say the word blog.
When I look at that particular blog piece of software I react viscerally. I said, “Oh, I don’t want this. I don’t want to be part of this.” There’s that scene in “Doctor Zhivago” where the professionals and the intelligentsia are reduced to having to walk with the hoi polloi, and that’s what I feel when I’m forced into this blog stuff.
So I want to take what I think of as a noble and principled stand in saying that I’m not going to be part of this blog stuff. And I’m going to insist upon this until I am washed away….
Well, they do have impact. Part of it is actually involved with a kind of further devaluation of information because what it sets up is this constant second guessing of information. Which is not necessarily bad but it does lower the value of all information. You undermine that authority of information. But having been around this business now for some time I’ve learned that nothing lasts too long. By all rights, 18 months from now we should be looking back at this and all kind of embarrassed to say the word blog — I hope.
I think he’s wrong. I think he’s very wrong. I also think he’s an arrogant prick to suggest that somehow old media journalists are inherently superior. But most of all, I think he’s running scared. His well-paid and prestigious job’s on the line ultimately and the only way he can cope is to regress into denial.
What exciting and fast moving times we live in!
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