Research Note: How to Kill Your Television
Sometimes, the media industry's like bunch of robots playing a broken record. Hamstrung by stale DNA, incumbents are caught in an almost algorithmic loop of the same errors, over and over (and over) again
Remember all the lame services the record labels rolled out?
They were lame because they totally missed the radical, game-changing power of cheap interaction: they saw the www as just another "distribution channel".
This time, it's the TV networks' turn.
What's interesting about this? Well, first, how DNA constrains players' choices.
And second, how those errors open enormous market space for a new player with new DNA to explode the lame value proposition of these moribund offerings - just like iTunes did in music.
It will take a year or two - but clever entrepreneurs should be looking at this space as we speak.
No - obviously, I don't mean pure distribution plays, like Brightcove or Joost. I mean players who design a newer, better, hyperefficient value chain.
Here's a quick hint: it's gonna be one where writers don't have to strike, because networks won't be trapped into being evil beancounting suits all the time - one where markets, networks, and communities totally redefine asset economics.
shit I hate to ask you this, but I thought iTunes was just a lame monopsonist play that did nothing to redefine the value chain. Isn't LastFM the real deal? I mean is iTunes even a network, community, or market?
I know lame question, lame topic, but you've aways been blase about itunes and only grudgingly positive. And now iTunes is a model?
hey,
itunes can be improved in many ways.
but everything's relative.
itunes may be a lame monopsonist, but we're still better off with itunes than with the nonsense the record labels threw at us...
Last.fm is very much the real deal - but it's pretty likely that unfortunately Les Moonves will kill it dead long before it can become a viable competitor to iTunes.
thx for the comment.
