The Future of TV and Newspapers

Media blogger Haydn Shaughnessy predicts that within ten years," [n]ewspapers will have shorn most of their staff within five years and will be relying on a new breed of writer/audio/video patch-maker." He also sees corporations as taking over a large portion of news broadcasting: "The sports network will be run by Adidas, Puma, Nike and Reebok with no need of content and distribution intermediaries."

Shaugnessy's predictions jibe with an increasing number of media pundits, bloggers and critics who anticipate new media technologies to democratize the distribution of media and, in so doing, revolutionize the way Big Media does business. As far as I can tell, most of the online crew believes that this will be a strong and positive change. I disagree. The way I see it, the quality of our media is just going to get worse.

The move online will not change Big Media. The major players will merely move their operations online, and they will dominate the field. Independent bloggers, online critics, and videobloggers might be able to generate buzz, but won't be able to draw the large mainstream audiences necessary to compete with companies that can mount large scale promotional campaigns and hire superstars to participate in their online programming.

While independent content producers will continue to make interesting stuff, Big Media will tip the scales toward entertainment, and we will see the same poor quality of programming online as we currently see on the major television networks. And if online newspapers move towards video production, they too are delving into a medium which has little to do with quality news.