Exploding TV: The network is dead. Long live the net.
: I left this comment over at Lost Remote in an effort clarify my exploding-TV belief that the big, old networks and their programming won’t die. They’ll just be lapped:
I don’t think that network programming will die but I do think that the means of distributing it will no longer be locked into the old networks. That wouldn’t happen if all we were seeing were the advent of an alternative pipe: the internet v. cable. What we will see at the same time is the growth of alternative content that will be produced at a MUCH lower cost, FAR better targeted to niche interests (the mass market is dead; long live the mass of niches), providing, as a whole, new competition to the old networks. The old networks and their programmers and advertisers will see that they can get BETTER distribution via the new, distributed network and consumers will DEMAND to get material that way — because it puts them in control — and so we will see the hegemony of the old, centralized network start to fall away and break apart: explode.
