Over at “What’s Next?” Keshava Dasarthy (who I know from NextNY) blogs about the Convergence 2.0 conference.
As a media consumer, there is a signal in proximity (on tv it is temporal, while on a site, it is more spatial). We naturally assume that things near each other will be similar in some important measure. Coupled with inertia that keeps us in the same area, this can be a powerful effect. The networks have used that for years, as they leverage “lead-in” from one show to boost the ratings of another, weaker show (think of all the one-season wonders that followed Seinfeld).
Microchunking blows that proposition out of the water. It means that each piece of content has to stand alone and win popularity on its own merits.
Good stuff, but the real meat of the piece comes after this
If the power in negotiations is shifting from the distributors (Cable and RBOCs) to content (proxied by the networks), why wouldn’t that shift continue, and ultimately end up with the primary producers of the content?
I’m not going to spoil the ending – you go there and read it yourself.