The Economic Laws of Content

Japanese researchers report that when broadband is fully available, people download only one-third more than they upload. (Picture source.)

This leads us to the assumption that folks are prosumers, producing as much as we consume, and that thus all users really are (and should be) equal.

But what are we really doing with the resource?

There is what I call an economic law covering content. It's a sort of inverse-square law on both the production side and the consumption side of broadband.

1. Almost anyone can write. It's also low bandwidth. So it's very symmetrical. And what someone defines as good (or bad) is so subjective there is an audience for almost everyone. (Even me.) Again, it's symmetrical.
2. Radio takes more people to do right. It's higher in bandwidth. Less symmetrical. And less of it is also "good," so again, less symmetrical.
3. TV takes even more people to do right. It's even higher in bandwidth. Even less symmetrical. And, again, less of it is "good." Also, it wears on its audience quicker.

Now if you want to restrict yourself to short bits (in terms of length) you can get over some of these hurdles. (Think blog posts.) It takes just a few people to create a short song. While its chance of being perceived as "good" is low, it's also infinitely re-usable. Once someone decides a song is good, they will listen to it many, many times.

Same thing, in spades, with making TV. It takes more people to do even a short TV bit that will be perceived as "good." Trouble is it's also less re-usable than a song. How many times have you seen your favorite "Seinfeld" episode? How many times have you heard your favorite song?

It's just as hard to do a bad TV show as a good one. These economic rules don't change. Networks and cable have a lot of really bad TV out there, which has a very tough time drawing an audience.

What does this all mean for the economics of networks? It means that no matter how advanced or easy-to-use the tools become, we have (as consumers) more appetite for sound, and even more appetite for print, than for TV.

How do we get over this? By using networks to work together. But that is something that is happening more slowly, because once people get together on a project they have to make decisions on roles. Which is hard, and subject to Moore's Law of Training (there is no Moore's Law of Training).

I'm not trying to throw cold water on the promise of the broadband medium. We are all still consumers as well as producers. What's happening, I think, is that our appetite for consumption is both broader (we go to more sources) and shallower (we take less from each source) as networks become richer.

Which is a very good thing indeed.