That is to say, after a 50 plus-year reign of supremacy, has broadcast media begun to slide down a slippery slope to be consigned to history with the telegraph and Morse code? More and more evidence seems to be mounting that broadcast is facing troubled times. First, the market was segmented when cable came of age. The “Big three” were suddenly faced with actual competition and they lost significant numbers of eyeballs. This didn’t do a lot for programming initially, the song “500 Channels and Nothing on” sort of summed up the early cable landscape (with the possible exception of MTV, in the early days). But eventually, the industry found its footing and went the way of the magazine industry with channels dedicated to niche markets—think the History Channel for old men, the Food Network for people who like to eat, the Travel Channel for people who want to see the world without leaving their house, and Animal Planet for people who can sit through six hours of Ron Reagan commentating the riveting action of a dog show.

And while radio has always been a bit of a wild-west environment, the world reacted to the homogenization of content with satellite radio and our friends (soon to be friend) XM and Sirius (maybe Xirius, quick run out and register that URL). Once again we have channels that are designed to appeal to a much narrower demographic based on the inescapable logic that there may not be enough of an audience to make a radio station devoted entirely to the delta blues genre in any one metropolitan area, but if you take all of the people from all of the metropolitan areas in the country and add in the smattering of people in between those places, suddenly you have a potential audience that rivals the legions of Britney Spears fans that used to exist. And Clear Channel had to go running to a judge to make sure its leveraged buyout isn’t plagued by nit picky questions from a lot of bean counting bankers.

So, we see the broadcast universe moving to a model of medium-casting, with content appealing on different channels to smaller groups of people. But where do we go from here? (more…)

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Earlier today while “Facebooking,” I saw that my friend Savannah had posted a YouTube video on my friend Emily’s wall. The video was a teaser/preview for an upcoming string of new episodes for MTV’s widely popular “The Hills.” Although the show is completely ridiculous, it is a mindless, guilty pleasure nonetheless. I quickly copied the link and placed it into e-mail to shoot out to a few friends, jokingly telling them to mark their calendars for March 24th when the show returns. Although I’m slightly embarrassed, executives at MTV should be thrilled that this viral transgression of its content happened. Moreover, it was my friend’s response to my e-mail that I found most interesting.

“Sorry bro, I can’t tube at work,” Boris said. It was at that moment that I realized ERA’s keynote speaker at the upcoming eRetailer Summit in Miami on Monday had truly made the map. Like its parent Google before it, YouTube has become an action verb! Join me in Miami on Monday to hear YouTube’s Brian Cusack discuss the promises and challenges of video in advertising.

Click on the video if you’d like a peak at the senseless L.A. drama.

Hopefully, I’ll see you in Miami where we can discuss issues that actually matter, involving not only your bottom line, but also your company’s future.

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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