Jeremy Charette
04-20-2007, 06:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070420_001960.html' target='_blank'>http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070420_001960.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"As much as some readers of this column like to bitch and moan about how they hate commercial television, most of them still watch it. True, there's the odd reader who claims to survive purely on BitTorrent copies of shows with commercials surgically removed so as to not taint the entertainment experience. And there are a fair number of New Media types who claim to do most of their viewing of user-generated video on YouTube or YouTube-equivalents. But the former content wouldn't exist if it weren't paid for originally by ads and the latter IS paid for by web ads if you haven't noticed. So until large numbers of people are willing to pay their own money for television, I'd say commercial-supported free TV is going to survive. And thanks to an Israeli start-up called Hiro Media, commercial TV appears to be coming to the Internet, too."</i><br /><br />Interesting. Bring TV to the web, but keep the commercials. Networks get to keep their exisiting ad sales and distribution networks, and web viewers get TV content in exchange. So whacky it just might work.