This is actually a good point. There's going to come a time where the dynamic changes, similar to what happened with television.
Television used to be free. Your buy-in was the television itself and MAYBE an extra antenna to get better reception. The television reception was via "the airwaves". Now, there's cable television, which people pay for. Not only the specialty channels, but the regular broadcast channels as well. WHY pay for television? More channels and perfect reception, instead of ghosting and fuzz. "Free for everyone" became "pay for better or stick to worse". Now that MSM, as we all knew was going to happen, has jumped on the bandwagon of video distribution via internet, there's going to have to be a similar turning point. There will have to be a split between "free content with less quality" and "paid content with more quality"... quality being perhaps encoding bit rate or length of program, like google video had ages ago. If you have quality, niche programming, you can get people to subscribe if you have benefits for their doing so, like in the cases where you can see the program LIVE on the paid internet site, without commercial interruption, or wait several days for the same exact program to come on cable television... WITH added commercials and cheesy announcers that subtract from your immersion into the program. Sites like Joost and Hulu can be easily reconfigured to have free and paid areas, just like even cable television has pay-per-view channels. -- Bill Cammack http://BillCammack.com --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Jay dedman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Here's an interesting opinion piece in the NY times: > http://tinyurl.com/3clb4z > > "INTERNET idealists like me have long had an easy answer for creative > types like the striking screenwriters in Hollywood who feel > threatened by the unremunerative nature of our new Eden: stop whining > and figure out how to join the party! > That's the line I spouted when I was part of the birthing celebrations > for the Web. I even wrote a manifesto titled "Piracy Is Your Friend." > But I was wrong. We were all wrong. " > > he's not really saying anything hugely new, but interesting that it's > being discussed. > will people expect web video to be free and subsidized by ads? > or can independents make a direct relationship with the community like > musicians are starting to do? > > and of course we, personal videobloggers, will continue to roll on. > http://nablopomo.ning.com/group/videobloggers > > Jay > > -- > http://jaydedman.com > 917 371 6790 > Video: http://ryanishungry.com > Twitter: http://twitter.com/jaydedman > Photos: http://flickr.com/photos/jaydedman/ > RSS: http://tinyurl.com/yqgdt9 >
