"Dead Media Walking"

Scribes Charlie Martin:

So think of it this way: the New York Times spends ten million dollars to deliver about as many readers as Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit can for a thousand bucks.  This has a lot of implications, but the biggest one is simple: it costs almost nothing these days to become a publisher, so lots of new publishers are coming into the market. 

On the other hand, the number of readers really hasn’t changed.  So, it’s like pouring the same amount of water from a tall pitcher into a wide flat baking dish; you’re going from a world where you can have lots of readers, but only a few outlets - the tall narrow world - and moving to one where there are lots more outlets, but where you inevitably end up with fewer readers for each.  The conventional name for this, in Internet-speak, is “the Long Tail”, but most pundits are taking it from the wrong end.  They don’t realize that, as the costs of entry are lower, readers inevitably migrate to the new sources, leaving fewer for the big outlets.

His prognostication regarding the old media:

What then?  This won’t stop.  Advertising-paid television is on the same track. I don’t have any use for broadcast TV any longer, I depend on cable.  And I’m one of millions.  And I know people who get all their television from YouTube or Hulu, by Netflix and by download. 

To some extent, the television networks are protected by the relatively high cost of production. But that won’t last.  Last night I was watching Ed Driscoll’s piece “The Red Queen’s Race“.  Ed appears to presents it in the sepia-toned set of a Victorian mansion, but in fact he shot it entirely in his home studio.  The whole “set” is digital.  Steve Green shoots his PJTV segments in his basement.  Mine are shot in my office.  And blip.tv gives you access to an amazing variety of original content, made by semi-professional creators who will only get better with experience. 

We’re only a few years - two to five is my guess - before the networks are in the same position as newspapers and magazines are today: their expensive, capital-intensive business model on the brink of destruction.

His conclusion: "Just ask medieval scribes how they felt about Gutenberg."

Props.