The Death Of Traditional Media

     It is not necessary to sugar coat or beat around the bush regarding this topic, but the Internet is killing traditional media!  If you can’t see this then I am afraid you are literally blind.

     First, let’s look at the progression of the amateur journalist and breaking news.  Cell phones, portable video cameras, and YouTube have made the average person a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize.  The earliest examples take us back to 911.  The earliest footage (plane crashing into the World Trade Center, and over all destruction) were from regular citizens.  Whether this media was from a cell phone, or video cameras they were first.  In fact, major TV News outlets broadcast this amateur video, because at that point they had little live, compelling footage.

     Second, we should fast-forward to present day, and how the Internet will affect broadcast news.  Let’s look at Henry Blodget’s model for the original ideas presented through television.

• Not much else to do at home that's as simple and fun as TV
• No way to get video content other than via TV
• No options other than TV for advertisers who want to tell video stories
• No options other than cable--and, more recently, satellite--to get TV
• Tight choke-points in each market through which all video content has to flow (cable company, airwaves), which creates enormous value for the owners of those gates.

This seems very primitive compared to the advancement in technologies, and the rise of the amateur journalist.  Not much to do at home that’s as simple and fun as TV?  As Blodget mentions we now have the Internet!  No way to get video other than TV?  Youtube, every major news website, and well again the Internet!  No options other than TV for advertisers?  Can you say Fire Fox Ad Blocker? 

     Listen to my warning, TV news is on its way out, and here’s why.  Remember a month ago the incident with the bomb in the airport?  There was cell phone footage on the Internet within minutes of the explosion!  Sure the video was subpar quality, but the fact that technology allows for this is amazing.  Where was Anderson Cooper?  Where was any reporter that CNN, or FOX News had set up in that area in case anything happened?  Oh yes, they simply were not there, or arrived long after this amateur footage made its circulation.  Listen to your humble narrator when I say that broadcast news is going the way of Old Yeller.  Now anyone with a cell phone and an Internet connection can be a version of Walter Kronkite!