While I might complain about Yahoo!’s new home page, on the whole, they’re still a good portal. Just ran across an AP article there that speculates free over the air broadcasting could come to an end due to shrinking advertising revenue.
It’s no secret that the television viewing audience has a lot of choices now as to how, where, and when they get programs to watch. I haven’t paid much attention to over the air network shows for a long time now. Part of that is because the shows I like the most aren’t on the networks anyway. And even many of the cable shows I follow can be downloaded legally or otherwise at relatively low cost. If free TV disappears, I’ll hardly notice or care. And if some of the shows I do care about go away, well, that happens. I’ll watch something else or read some books. Or, hey, maybe I’ll make my own entertainment and share it on the web.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. The entertainment industry seems to be undergoing a long overdue correction. For one thing, the television rating system has never been exact meaning that advertisers were probably overpaying in a lot of cases. Actual viewer counts can be much more precise for a web delivered show than anything broadcast. And the ads themselves can be much better targeted. So it’s no wonder the ad dollars are flowing in the web’s general direction now. In the end, the huge media conglomerates are either going to have to learn to live with smaller profits or bring something new to the table that their customers want.