Will there be no Hiding from the Mainstream Entertainment Garbage?
You Tube, the once criticized and bashed nemesis of the mainstream press, news organizations and television is now the new diamond in the eye of mainstream entertainment investors. Cynthia Brumfield, an industry analyst at Emerging Media Dynamics is sounding more and more like a fresh study of social media rather than a Madison Avenue Suit. Brumfield says “If you’re going try and lure in tomorrow’s viewers you really need to be where they are today”, something the internet early adopters have been forecasting for years. Media giants like NBC who a few months back were suing You Tube are now throwing large sums of of money at the internet video giant owned by Google to strike strategic Partnerships.
You Tube is Hemorrhaging Money!
It is also being said that Google/You Tube is buying in on this massive amount of mainstream media attention and is planning to offer premium placement on the site to any mainstream publications that decide to publish their content on You Tube. Frankly, I can’t blame the company because the success in traffic increases over the past few years have been the bain of it’s existence with bandwidth becoming a commodity. Bear Sterns has reported that You Tube had revenues last year of 15 Million dollars, meaning that the company was paying out nearly 100 times that in operational costs. I don’t care how much money you have behind you, there is no sustaining that kind of business model.
How about the independents?
What does this mean for the independent content producers? With Google/You Tube offering so many incentives to mainstream press will the chances of an independent being seen drop to insurmountable odds? Are the days of an artist sharing their creative process through home edited movies drop away to some reality TV, internet MTV crap mashup? Will we be flooded with news that we ran from mainstream TV and newspapers to get away from? Shit! These people are like leeches. They are going to try and deliver their bad, sad, and inflated news to you any way they can!
Power to the People
The one glimmer of hope we have as internet junkies, RSS subscribers, and blog readers is that we understand the principal of ‘Opting In’ This gives a small amount of power back to the people. If we don’t let them shovel crap down our throats and we don’t subscribe to their content they will fail a miserable death the same way they have on the Tube and in the Rags. However, I don’t hold out much hope after seeing the most popular stories on Digg.
Lemons to Lemonade
I am almost never a negative person, and this might be the first negatively toned blog post I have ever written! So lets make lemonade here people. Give me some hope. What is the future for independent content producers? How will we “The people” continue down the path of regaining controll and maintaining a voice? With Google owning the lions share of search both in text and video is there a chance that the system will not be ‘gamed’ by ever blood sucking Madison Avenue agency? Is there a chance that the internet will remain a democratic society r will it be overun by our children filling the shoes of the current entertainment executives? Will we need a new frontier to explore or is the digital realm the last unchartered water?
I know this is a lot to think about, and i will be back to my normal self tomorrow, but I sure hope i don’t look back on this post in five years and say……I told ya so!
Keith Burtis is a social media and digital marketing professional. If you or your company are looking to REV THE ENGINE on your digital efforts contact Keith today! Specialties include: Blog design/Integration, Custom Facebook Pages, Social, Digital and Interactive Content strategies.
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