While I was out becoming a dad, Bob Garfield’s next great piece in his provocative media-disruption series came out, running both in AdAge and Wired. It’s all about video, television and online disruption. I think the Wired subhead offers the most important and simplistic insight about the state of online video at this juncture:
TV advertising is broken, putting $67 billion up for grabs. Which explains why google spent a billion and change on an online video startup.
Of course, there are a million important components behind the online video revolution, which Garfield tackles in his sarcastic, entertaining and blunt style:
- The desire to create and share
- The Google factor
- TV exploding as we know it
- History of YouTube, the raging online video machine
- Consumer appeal of YouTube-like functionality
- The TV-industry victims
- Prospects for viability
- The unknowns
- The copyright issues (WARNING: I was quoted regarding rights of content creators.)
- Potential big-company litigants
Definitely check it out. The AdAge version is better because the story is all on one scrollable page, versus Wired’s (addiction to those darn page views) four.