Raise the Hammer

I dig the analysis, but I think it misses one thing, that the choice of media not only affects viewing times but, with so much more content it also affects the size of the total audience for any one show. It's not enough for big networks to try to control the dispersal of their content through the internet, even if they are able to apply their advertising from the original broadcast through to the final viewed segment. Many people more people are watching something else entirely. We cans also see the effects in the current "battle" between Canadian broadcast networks and cable suppliers. I mean, when did the networks ever care about local broadcasting except when appearing before the CRTC?

This does have greater implications. Those advertisements used to push mass-produced products through the marketplace, products that used to be made by, well, some of the folks working assembly lines here in Hamilton. This analysis paints one of the paths to the recent economic breakdown, and how unlikely it is that such manufacturing stuff is ever going to return to its dominant economic role. But this analysis also points out the need to attach some form of economic structure to the information-based economy, or some significant changes in economic structure. Recordings, producing things from experiences, don't seem to be able to do that and advertisers are also flumoxed. Moral appeals and legal demands won't do the job.

This trend to public media control also affects the ability to build political consensus. The weaknesses of "representative" democracy become increasingly evident, Parliament increasingly irrelevant. While proroguing the place is, I think, a symptom, I doubt it's a step toward participatory democracy. But that's just me. The challenge is there, like it or not.