TREotM: Content in the 21st Century -- Upending Distribution

This is a book in progress Go here to read it from the beginningThe close of the 20th Century saw the beginning of the rush online Plenty of pundits predicted falling skies amp8230 but nobody quite understood the real ramifications of that rush to onlineIndeed as the 21st Century debuted content amp8211 that is news information novels videos voices music etc amp8211 was distributed pretty much top down the way it had always beenMovies were shown on theater screens repackaged as DVDs and sold through video stores and mail orderTelevision shows were broadcast on television on cable and via satelliteBooks were published and sold via mail order and bookstoresMagazines were published and mailed and some were also sold at check out counters in groceries and big box stores as well as in some bookstores and concession outlets in airports and other venuesNewspapers were assembled around classified ads printed and trucked and shipped pretty near everywhereMusic was produced and sold on CDs in music stores once called record stores and played via terrestrial and satellite radioamp160 Some vinyl records continued to be produced for audiophilesAdvertising paid for quite a lot of the costs of producing most everything amp8230 and billboards posters signs and other sorts of media continued proliferatingamp8220Youamp8217ve got mailamp8221 dominated the burgeoning online world via AOL amp8230 which would as January arrived participate in one of historyamp8217s biggest merger failures along with Time WarnerIt wasnamp8217t long however before information and mail showed signs of moving from the Postal Service amp8211 and even the overnight guys amp8211 to fax machines and more slowly onlineThen Brian Roberts convinced Bill Gates to invest a billion Microsoft dollars in Comcast to help spur the development of highspeed data infrastructureamp160 Bingo folksamp160 It workedamp160 Cableamp8217s infrastructure was upgraded to a hybrid fiber optic and coaxial systemBroadband came to cable first and then spread to other means of distribution including DSL digital subscribe lines from telephone companies and even to twosatellite systemsamp160 Two of the socalled Baby Bells began deploying fiber optics both to the curb FTTC and to the home FTTHamp160 The Baby Bells also began to consolidate today only two ATampampT really Southwestern Bell reclaiming the venerable name and VerizonAnd content got a whole bunch of new homesMusic moved online amp8230 and completely changed the monetary dynamics of the music businessamp160 Napster made it easy to amp8220acquireamp8221 music instead of amp8220buyamp8221 itamp160 Business models began changingMotion pictures and television shows became the same videoamp160 Movies migrated online amp8230 and got pirated moreamp160 TV shows streamed onlineamp160 BitTorrent arrived and created peertopeer networks and therefore the easy pirating of videoamp160 Netflix which originally just distributed movies on CDs by mail moved aggressively to license more movies as well as old TV shows and then began producing its ownamp160 The ability to stream video resulted in new models of viewership including socalled binge watching viewing a whole season of a series all at onceamp160Classified ads abandoned newspapers and migrated first to craigslistamp160 Just FYI craigslistcom originated in San Francisco as an event source and then morphed into classifieds and migrated all the way across the countryamp160 Newspapers were caught with only ink on their fingers and failed to recognize the threatamp160 Newspapers around the world shrank as a resultamp160 The digital revolution forced all forms of print to experiment with online internetbased news deliveryAmazonamp8217s somewhat maniacal concentration on getting things to its online customers quickly resulted in the explosive growth of ereaders from its own Kindleamp160 Old school companies tried to compete with metoo products like the Nook from major book retailer Barnes ampamp Nobleamp160 Amazon won that raceamp160 The ease of use built into the various Kindle models and Amazonamp8217s growing inventory of books and publications helped fuel explosive growthamp160 From an online bookseller Amazon now challenges just about every other retailer in the worldAs distribution changed so did advertisingamp160 More on that after we take a look at what content appeared to help drive these changesNext week Chapter 12 Part 3 amp8211 The Changing Media MixThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageMyersBizNet management or associated bloggers

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TREotM: Content in the 21st Century -- Upending Distribution

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Paul S. Maxwell

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