The Internet took off in the late 1990s. It has only been 10 years and one of the media's biggest names has declared bankruptcy. There is a lot of bad news this week in the 5th Estate, nationally and locally.
Tribune media company seeks bankruptcy protection
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081208/ap_on_bi_ge/tribune;_ylt=AoRUANSI9af...
NYT has to mortgage building to continue operations:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/08/business/08times.php
It will be interesting times.
Chris correctly noted that the newspaper business is losing advertising and readers to the Internet. What I found amusing was several right wing radio hosts - including Limbaugh and Hannity - trying to tie the failure of purportedly left-leaning major newspapers to their editorial policies and not the fact that they have an outdated business model that was slow to recognize the Information Revolution.
AM radio is next, but its core base of 45-70 year old listeners will be much slower to make the switch to the Net for information and news. This is not to say that they are not tech savvy, but rather that old habits die hard.
I chuckle when people start whining about the Fairness Doctrine with commercial radio, with its overemphasis on conservative talk shows. They simply do not understand that these stations play for their audiences, and that the reason why commercial radio and conservative talk radio go hand-in-hand is that older listeners tune in, and they tend to be much more conservative.
In 5-10 years, commercial radio will be a low-revenue, highly automated, and increasingly irrelevant dinosaur, with a dwindling audience and little influence.
http://historymike.blogspot.com/
http://historymike.blogspot.com/