Replies

To pick at a nit, what Milhous and I do is chronicle the decline of the (DriveBy Media, Dinosaur Media, Mainstream Media - pick one). That's why we call it a Death Watch. We never have said they are dead - they most assuredly are still alive and powerful.

But that they are dying is not arguable, by any reasonable measure. Broadcast - both news and entertainment - is funded by advertising and always will be. Advertisers pay broadcasters for the number of eyeballs (or ears) that will view their sales pitch. Eyeballs are leaving broadcast television and broadcast newspapers. The numbers are undeniable. Broadcast's business model that has worked for the past 75-100 years or so is gone forever.

As far as funding news operations as loss leaders so as to appear PC, I'll agree that is happening now. But no business can afford to do this indefinitely. Within a very short time, television networks will be just another url on the internet competing against millions of others. Large metropolitan newspapers will be gone, with a few exceptions.

What business model in the future will support the new information distribution system is not known. I sure don't know.

But I think the internet is as much of a change agent as was the invention of movable type by Gutenberg. Information is power. Centralized control of information is power. Much as Gutenberg's Bible helped spawn Protestantism, the internet will democratize information sharing and education.

I think it is progress.

See, I disagree. They aren't "businesses," and should never be viewed as such. They are sham fronts, whose real purpose is to act as subsidized propaganda arms of the Left. So it won't matter if they lose money.

Heck, the CIA supported Greenview Press for decades while it lost money, because that wasn't the purpose: the purpose was to turn out favorable studies for the U.S.