Paul Graham uses a lot of words to basically tell us why the balance of power is shifting away from distribution and moving towards content owners.
Why? Because previously, distribution controlled the dominant media channels into the house but they began to lose control with the internet.
So are content owners gaining while distribution companies are losing? No– they are in worse shape than the distribution companies. Are they optimistic? No because they see the upheaval in the traditional media model and “new media” has not shown the ability to increase or maintain the size of the existing pie.
Advertisers subsidize television media but as this changes, what will the economics of television shows look like in the new model? Perhaps media will move to the extremes– a lot of cheap media at one end and then paid content on the other.
Of course this picture breaks down if new media monetization really starts to take off, and I sure hope it does because I won’t look forward to paying for a lot of the ad supported entertainment we get on the tube right now.
[...] On Youtube monetization- online media does not replace the lost revenues of offline media. I note this because I said exactly this yesterday. [...]