1979 was the peaked year for the Big Three Networks.
In fact, ABC came out with an all-star news anchoring format.
1997, the Internet emerged, first as a blip on the radar then video, voice and data all merged, with more users joining to create a whole new medium with the Net effect.
Comcast cannot lay cable fast enough while GE could not hold on to Universal Park or Jurassic Park. So, let’s do it!
While the ink isn’t dried on the latest merger, the media market was already fragmented. No more mass media as we know it. Just a universe of niches ever mutating, as billions join in (4 billion cell phone users in 2008 alone).
Adam and Eve. 1 and 0. Go forth with Manifest Destiny. The whole pie is yours. Ethics in Business School, Law school, and Medical school have been an afterthought. Bad guys seem to get away with it more than often. Stewardship of the Earth? That’s for the meek, who inherits the crumbs (Trickle-down of Everything).
At least O is sensible. She wants out. Too much poker stress for O. She wants her Empire of O vertically integrated and well-branded. Everyone wants to lock in their digital archive (Michael Jackson bought the rights to the Beatles records).
Heck! I just bought for myself George Harrison’s “Let it Roll”. Essentially, I just put a coin in his digital coffer.
For years, the audience sat back, relaxed, and got shouted at (the Network). Now, they can videotape , upload, and talk back. No analogy can come close, except for the story of a blind man who got his sight back, only to feel disappointed by what he finally saw. Our imagination is stronger than reality. Scott Peck studied community as it went through phases: superficial, chaotic, compromising, finally cohesive. Perhaps the online community has just gone through the honey-moon phase (pre-2001), then fragmented (dot.com bust), only to regroup, this time, with adjusted expectations (compromising), to finally collaborate and co-create. Wiki community has been transient, Alice Restaurant of sort, but the core groups are still there. There is no doubt that E-commerce is here to stay, in part because it removes physical constraint (time and space). Amazon holiday sales figures demonstrates this point.
But the main reason is for businesses, large and small, to compete in a new platform where size doesn’t seem to matter as much (virtual weightlessness?).
I thought at the time (79), the Big Three had been the Trinity (until Ted Turner sent his young camera crew to film everything to fill the 24/7 air time). 30 years later, even with Hollywood and Hulu, GE still has to sell. It had missed 97. This makes one wonder what it would be like in 2017, with Web 3.0 .
One thing is for sure, it won’t take 30 years for someone to say “The time is right” (to sell). When things are co-located in the “cloud”, one can divest Hulu “faster and more furious” than Hollywood. Net Speed.
Thang Nguyen 555 