Broadcasting Still the Economy's Top Fuel

In last week's Jessell at Large column, TVNewsday Editor Harry Jessell contends that to survive and thrive, local broadcasters urgently need to bulldoze copyright barriers and start streaming content on the Internet — and to all other platforms.

Can't argue with that. After all, out-of-home viewing will bring stations an extra $1.2 billion in annual ad revenues according to the Open Mobile Video Coalition — and that's a minimum projection. So it's a no-brainer to try to deliver your signal to wherever your viewers happen to be.

But that merely addresses the physical world. The real challenge is to keep those eyeballs from straying elsewhere in the media universe. For years, stations have suffered audience fragmentation due to competition from cable, satellite, the Internet, video games, DVDs ... ad depressium.


http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2008/07/14/daily.1/