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What is wrong with the internet?
Part 2 Recently someone said to me "Gee it must be exciting working on that internet information super highway thing. Especially since you were in almost from the start. It must be like it was for those people in the early 50's who started television... exciting, new, fresh, cutting edge, fun..."
Well.
Sadly, we in the duhbya-duhbya-duhbya business never had a chance. Before the experimenting was done, before the exciting fresh ideas could even get off the ground, the information super highway was hijacked by MBA Clowns.
"Oh get off it," I hear you saying. "Television has always been about money and advertising too." True, but think of it this way... if television followed the internet model, infomercials would have started taking over the networks in 1955, not 1980. And that's 25 years of growth that the internet will never have. Because of Ed Sullivan and Wayne and Shuster we've had Saturday Night Live and SCTV. Because of Steve Allen, we've had Johnny Carson and David Letterman. We've seen an information and entertainment industry grow by trying new things, new formats... and spending money -- lots of it -- on pilot programming.
"Oh come on! There are tons of cool sites out there." True. And this IS where the net differs from TV. Anyone and everyone can have their own website, and as a result we have Suck and Word and The Brunching Shuttlecocks and and and... Whew! And as you can see, my partners and I in the Top Quality Content TM community aren't just whining about it, we're doing something (okay, so it ain't Top Quality every day, but someday, just... just... look out!)
The sad thing is this: in the professional world, the web way is the MBA way which means the bottom line is everything. Content providers have been talked into becoming PORTALS rather than DESTINATIONS because some web business advisor told them "the strategic partnerships you'll gain by leveraging your brand on this portal site will allow you to target a horizontal consumer share... and it won't cost you a thing." The bottom line usually means bare minimum resulting in a mediocre product that's just good enough to get by the masses. And that's what's wrong with the internet.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Tomorrow: Yes, there's more.
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