An industry is dying ... That industry is the media industry
That's a spectacularly vague assertion. Let me give you a more pointed one: there is no such thing as the media industry. In [textual] publishing alone there are at least a dozen different highly specialized industries that, aside from a common technology base (the printing press) are radically different in structure and operation. And that's within any one language/nation; if you look at, say, mass-audience consumer movies, is it reasonable to stretch and assertion that "the movies are dying" to cover both Hollywood and Bollywood, much less crowdsourced low budget SF epics from Finland and state-subsidized art films from France?
(I'll agree that the MPAA and RIAA are parasitic and preside over a business model that doesn't appear to be long-term viable without lobbying for government support -- but that's not the same thing at all, and I really wish pundits like Mattheij would be a bit more circumspect in their predictions.)
The term "media industry" is not usually applied to "crowdsourced low budget SF epics from Finland and state-subsidized art films from France", any more than the term "agricultural industry" would be applied to someone's backyard herb garden.
The OP did not claim that "movies are dying", he claimed that the media industry is dying, which is a completely different statement. If the media industry dies, people will still make movies, they just won't have the massive budgets that contemporary movies have.
For what it's worth, I think the OP is letting his anticipation cloud his better judgment. While the media industry will certainly decrease in size and influence, and will probably become more selective about which scripts it funds, it will continue to exist so long as customers are willing to pay $20 for the experience of watching a blockbuster on a hundred-food cinema screen.
You're right! That's why you're the writer and I'm the (very much part time) blogger I guess.
I'll try to be more precise in the future, the media industry is indeed a much too broad brush. This bit started out as an email I wrote to myself a while ago and then posted in response to another thread on HN, I should have done a better job of sharpening it before posting it.
My gut feeling, FWIW, is that the internet is a communications medium that tends to disintermediate supply chains; because it makes it really easy for people to locate sources of supply, a lot of traditional middlemen suddenly discover that nobody needs them.
But that doesn't mean there won't be any middlemen; merely that the buggy-whip vendors will be replaced by the folks who understand how to sell automobile seat covers (if you'll permit me to stretch the metaphor).
Yeah I never like when people toss around the term "media industry" especially in the context the author is talking about (it dying) because what exactly is media?
The author might as well have said "the media industry is dying...long live the media industry." Most of the companies that are indirectly referred don't appear to be dying at all. It's true that they are taking in less revenue, but the digital age allows them to produce and distribute at a fraction of the cost.
Hulu is a joint venture between Fox (News Corp), NBC (NBC Universal), and ABC (Walt Disney). The WSJ (owned by News Corp) has been successful in monetizing the audience instead of the content (charging you only after you have read a certain number of articles).
These companies will still be around for the foreseeable future, but instead of making billions on physical media (papers, DVDs, and CDs) they will be making billions from streaming and DRM'd content which have a lower cost to produce.
The cool thing though is that these same lowered costs allow artists to self publish if they want, but they will still need to make a deal with a distributor (perhaps directly with Apple or Amazon) to get there content into the market place.
Where the established industry has an advantage though is in its ability to market artists (and not so talented artists) outside of these new digital markets/channels.
That's a spectacularly vague assertion. Let me give you a more pointed one: there is no such thing as the media industry. In [textual] publishing alone there are at least a dozen different highly specialized industries that, aside from a common technology base (the printing press) are radically different in structure and operation. And that's within any one language/nation; if you look at, say, mass-audience consumer movies, is it reasonable to stretch and assertion that "the movies are dying" to cover both Hollywood and Bollywood, much less crowdsourced low budget SF epics from Finland and state-subsidized art films from France?
(I'll agree that the MPAA and RIAA are parasitic and preside over a business model that doesn't appear to be long-term viable without lobbying for government support -- but that's not the same thing at all, and I really wish pundits like Mattheij would be a bit more circumspect in their predictions.)