>Actually I completely agree. The future of "TV" will be a la carte subscription offerings over broadband with some content produced for mass appeal and some very targeted at specific markets and all paid for with some kind of 'microcash'. The move to completely digital TV is the first big piece, fiber optic to the house will be part of it, wireless devices another part. Should be fun and it will definitely unleash great creativity and incredible profit opportunities as what was a very inefficient distribution model is swept away.
Actually, the distribution model was very efficient - it delivered everywhere, didn't it? But it went down the drain to the happy grounds where media go when their business model starts to rely on advertising. That seems to be the kiss of death for any medium. They may thrive for a while, but will eventually and inevitably screw up their audience and stop selling content. Their content will become the icing between the ads.
That happened to the newspapers, radio, TV, newsmagazines, specialized magazines, landline phones, mail, email, SMS messages - any medium which can be used to deliver spam, will be strangled by spam until it becomes irrelevant.
I'm not buying local newspaper because they're so oriented to the local demographics (read: military) with all the assumptions that go with it, so there's nothing there for me, except maybe irritation. I'm not buying NYT or any of that, because they take so much care to fit a huge headline and the ads close at hand, and I have to hunt the other half of the article somewhere deep inside. Whatever happened with typesetting, can't you guys put the article TOGETHER? Inch thick magazines are even worse - which is why I subscribe to Harper's only, they just don't do much of that, the rest of the article is nearby, and there aren't twenty pages of ads between.
Radio - blogged that a year ago. Dead. TV - I keep minimal cable for just those days when I may want to know the minute-to-minute news about a coming storm. And even there they're behind weatherunderground.com, and they always seem to have the time to ANNOUNCE that we'll hear important news. If they're so knowing important, why not right away? We watched a total of about 8 hours of TV this year, so far - and that's with the finger ready on the magic button (it says "mute", but it's magic - I still don't know what are those phone guys talking about, and I don't want to know). TV, almost dead.
Movies - can't be bothered to sit 15 minutes and watch trailers before the movie actually begins. I've heard that one guy actually sued the house for lying about the movie start times. I'm not buying DVDs for that matter - maybe from $5 bin when they're old enough. And I don't have a DVD player - watch them only via a nifty little Korean player which lets you skip the ads. I even replaced my car radio with a simpler one but with AUX jack so I could listen to my own, ad free. Nobody shouts at me while I drive.
People are irritated by ads more and more. I've recently found a blog by a kindred soul, which was a great sanity check for me (and I'm not insane!): what it said about why cable TV sucks was "why would anyone pay for anything that's already paid by ads"? Which is exactly what I said long ago about any of satellite TV/radio/digital cable/any other packaging. I'd be willing to pay for content, if they can guarantee that it will be ad free, or double money back. And a la carte - I'm not paying Turner, Murdoch, Disney or Clear Channel a dime, if I can help it.
The problem, however, is that advertising still works. No matter whether advertising works for itself (i.e. does it really help the sales of the products it advertises) or it just works for itself (i.e. in its own interest, convincing the customer that it helped the sales). As long as sufficient number of people are buying it (in several meanings of the expression), there'll be a way for ad maker and ad space seller to convince the product seller to fork out the cash for the next bore.
Which then hinders the development of content. You can't survive on the web by selling content, because there'll be always someone who will set the expected price to zero or thereabouts, if you'll only accept a few ads attached. The ad supported model doesn't work in the long run, it is worse than a parasite, it will eventually kill the host or change it beyond recognition, but meanwhile that symbiosis is setting the price.
So, is it art or adware, that is the question.
