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Michael Wolff writes in the NYT that online-media revolutionaries once figured they could eat TV's lunch by stealing TV's business model with free content supported by advertising but online media is now drowning in free and internet traffic has glutted the ad market, forcing down rates. Digital publishers, from The Guardian to BuzzFeed, can stay ahead only by chasing more traffic — not loyal readers, but millions of passing eyeballs, so fleeting that advertisers naturally pay less and less for them. Meanwhile, the television industry has been steadily weaning itself off advertising — like an addict in recovery, starting a new life built on fees from cable providers and all those monthly credit-card debits from consumers. Today, half of broadcast and cable's income is non-advertising based. And since adult household members pay the cable bills, TV content has to be grown-up content: "The Sopranos," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "The Wire," "The Good Wife."
So how did this tired, postwar technology seize back the crown? Television, not digital media, is mastering the model of the future: Make 'em pay. And the corollary: Make a product that they'll pay for. BuzzFeed has only its traffic to sell — and can only sell it once. Television shows can be sold again and again, with streaming now a third leg to broadcast and cable, offering a vast new market for licensing and syndication. Television is colonizing the Internet and people still spend more time watching television than they do on the Internet and more time on the Internet watching television. "The fundamental recipe for media success, in other words, is the same as it used to be," concludes Wolff, "a premium product that people pay attention to and pay money for. Credit cards, not eyeballs."
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 29 2015, @05:52PM
TV beat the Internet? The war is over? I don't buy it. This article is based on a bunch of assumptions and implications I think are wrong.
If cable TV is doing well, it certainly isn't on the merits of the format or business model alone. Why else is there this talk of cord cutters and cord nevers? Let them stop playing dirty by suppressing competition in unethical ways, and if they still do well, fine. I doubt they will. They've tried real hard to jam that genie back in its bottle, and have only managed to slow things down. TV on demand is inherently superior. If the Internet was allowed to reach its full potential, and we didn't have monopolist ISPs impeding its speed and reach, and entrenched media companies desperately expanding the scope and length of copyright, we'd have the digital public library and all its goodness by now.
Nor do I see this weaning from advertisers the article speaks of. If anything, cable TV got worse. In the 1980s, one of the appeals of cable TV, and justification for having to pay, was no commercials. They long ago abandoned that, and now they cram in as many commercials as they can get away with, just like broadcast TV.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 29 2015, @06:10PM
TV beat the Internet? The war is over? I don't buy it. This article is based on a bunch of assumptions and implications I think are wrong.
Specifically I think they're straw dogging it that all the 70 year old angry men who watch fox news agitprop all day were supposely going to obsessively click refresh on gawker and kotaku for 12+ hours per day to get their agit prop fix, and that didn't happen therefore the entire internet, all of it, is a failure and TV is the winner.
It would be interesting to look at age stats of your typical PBS viewer vs your typical youtube viewer and we'll see who wins in the long run. Locally the PBS stations are still pushing pre-boomer and early boomer content, I'm not old enough for any of it to appeal to me, so I'm guessing that's 55+. The average youtube viewer age is probably still in high school.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday June 29 2015, @06:12PM
We do have online public digital libraries. Some of them remain truly just all the free / public domain stuff as in Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org] and LibriVox https://librivox.org/ [librivox.org]. Here are a number of great digital repositories. http://www.hathitrust.org/ [hathitrust.org], https://archive.org/ [archive.org], https://openlibrary.org/ [openlibrary.org], and http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ [upenn.edu]. The Internet Archive https://archive.org/ [archive.org] in particular is extremely awesome as they have Text, Video, Audio, and Software available. It is true that there are some broken things, like continual extension of copyright, but there are also some very awesome things.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday June 29 2015, @06:16PM
How could I have forgotten GOG http://www.gog.com/ [gog.com]? GOG is the solution to Abandonware.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 29 2015, @10:40PM
Nice list. There's also the very small Baen Free Library: http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx [baenebooks.com]
But I was thinking that the entire Library of Congress ought to be online, and that the government should do it, not Google Books. A huge missing area is research publications. Academic publishers are notorious for locking publicly supported research behind paywalls. I see copyright as the biggest impediment to the digital library. We'll never truly have the paperless office until these antiquated laws are updated or abolished.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:54PM
We won't have the truly paperless office for a while, because of various logistical things. I can flip through a paper book a lot easier than I can flip through an equivalent electronic book. There are various advantages and disadvantages in the two formats. I would be very surprised, if we got to the point where paper was obsoleted by technology in the next 50 to 100 years. I won't go so far as to say that paper will never become obsolete, but there are some major hurdles to jump to get there. I own and use a Nook Simple Touch. It is an awesome way to get and read free e-books and non-free e-books. Just never, ever buy a Kindle, at least not until they have a simple way for you to "side load" your free e-books. I can dump a bunch of free e-books on a microsd card, plug it into my nook, and am good to go. I can even, just plug it into my computer with a cord and drop the files onto it. Kindle, no such luck, but we have this convoluted system where you can go about getting your free books on our device. Oh, yeah, it goes through their system, so they undoubtedly know, exactly what you have on your device. Oh, excuse me, their device, that you get to use.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:10AM
That's assuming abandonware was/is a problem. I see GOG's approach as problematic instead... The company is making money off games they didn't help create by bundling it with an emulator they also have no hand in — and that'd be fine (nothing wrong with making money by creating the bundles) *except* rather than just let the people buy from them that are happy to pay for their bundled copy, they've pressured all of the abandonware sites to replace those games with links to GOG, making it so *everyone* that wants to play has to pay GOG.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 01 2015, @06:33PM
The entire reason for Abandonware Sites was to preserve Gaming History. GOG is doing a fabulous job of that. Even more than that they are also enticing Developers and Copyright holders to release their software DRM Free on GOG. Sure, I could wish that all companies on earth, released their software as freeware after 15 years, but that's somewhat unrealistic. I am hopeful that perhaps Steam will use GOG as their Archival system for older / unsupported games. GOG doesn't just release a random crappy zip file. They release, an installer, manuals, sound tracks, and sometimes even more interesting things with the games they sell. They also have great sales during Summer and Christmas. Terraria is a great example of a Developer releasing their game DRM Free on GOG. Though, with the GOG version they also released the sound track, which you had to purchase separate from Steam. I actually bought the game on Steam, found the Sound Track author's random place they were selling and bought it there, and then bought the game with free sound track on GOG. I actually payed more for the Sound Track than I did for the game on Steam or GOG. I probably have less than $20 invested in the game/soundtrack and I now own a DRM Free version. Abandonware is illegal. What GOG is doing is legal and they are providing you extra stuff that you may have never received otherwise. Not all of the games on GOG require DOSBox. The Abandonware sites have survived this long, because they flew under the radar of anyone who cared. All of the Abandonware sites are living under the graces of the copyright holders who just haven't bothered to sue them, probably, because in most cases they could care less. GOG is making a sustainable ecosystem for DRM Free versions of all games that you won't lose access to, because some company or random abdandonware site ceased to exist.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"