Control Freaks

Here are two interesting articles that talk about how big media is attempting to maintain control over content and audiences. Cory Doctorow writes about High Def and how the media is forcing electronics manufacturers to bend to its will.

Jeff Jarvis gave the keynote address at the Video on the Net conference, talking about how the media landscape is changing. Here's a sample:

"We debated for decades in media whether content or distribution was king. Turns out, neither is. Conversation is the kingdom. Trust is king. You can’t own all the content. You can’t control all the distribution. It turns out that trying to do either is extremely expensive – and, in our post-scarcity media universe, ultimately futile. In the old, closed world of media, owning content or distribution gave you the advantage. It gave you control. Now it just gives you an unbearable cost structure that millions of new competitors – us – are not burdened with. So what should media’s relationship with all of us be? Are we competitors? Or are we partners? If conversation is king, then we must be partners. For the big guys are not in control of the conversation anymore. We are."

And he offers an example of how the Net trumps traditional distribution:

"When Jon Stewart went on CNN’s Crossfire to kill it, bless his heart, he got, according to the head of the network, about 150,000 viewers that day. The next day, of course, it went up on iFilm, where it has been viewed 3.8 million times. Figures double that on Bittorrent et al. So compare: 150,000 on CNN versus 10 million on the network no one owns, our internet – and to a far younger demographic, by the way.

And, of course, YouTube is serving 100 million videos a day now.

The result: The old network is dying."