A Blog Writes the Obituary of TV: "Broadcast television is dead," [Prince Campbell, a former media executive who runs the Chartreuse (BETA) blog] declares. "Just like the Internet killed the music industry, it's about to do the same thing to broadcast TV."
As Internet TV Aims at Niche Audiences, the Slivercast Is Born: In the last six months, major media companies have received much attention for starting to move their own programming online, whether downloads for video iPods or streaming programs that can be watched over high-speed Internet connections.
Perhaps more interesting ? and, arguably, more important ? are the thousands of producers whose programming would never make it into prime time but who have very dedicated small audiences. It's a phenomenon that could be called slivercasting.
Online Auteurs Hardly Need to Be Famous: Increasingly, the new, new thing in media is getting paid for the homemade. Reflecting the surge in the popularity of user-created material, both online and traditional media companies are opening their wallets to make sure that the best of it finds its way onto their television shows and Web sites.
Even Yahoo, the nation's most-visited Web site, has signaled a change in its strategy by moving away from creating its own professional content in favor of user-generated material ? and it appears willing to pay for anything its users deem worthy.
All this is part of a trend seeking to turn conventional media business models on their heads in the digital age. Typically, media content was either paid for by consumers in the form of subscription fees or by marketers through advertising. In offering to pay users for creating content, companies like Yahoo are not looking to turn every amateur into a professional so much as acknowledging the growing appeal of homemade material to audiences and hence its value to media businesses.
"At some point in the next six to nine months, this will become competitive," said Michael Hirschorn, executive vice president for original programming at VH1, which, like iFilm, is owned by Viacom.
