All the brouhaha over Keith Olbermann obscured a key point.
More people now get their news and opinion from this medium, the Internet, than from TV.
More people now watch top YouTube videos than watch most TV shows, yes even network shows.
DailyKos now has over 278,000 registered subscribers on its RSS feed. This compares very favorably with the 876,000 who subscribe to CNN's world news feed. (Kos is almost entirely an American operation.) There is a DailyKos TV blog in beta. TalkingPointsMemo (TPM) has about 50,000 on its feed. MSNBC has 600,000.
I mention all this because Markos Moulitsas, unlike most in the liberal blogosphere (and like Josh Marshall, who runs TPM) is an entrepreneur. Compare Kos' numbers to those of Nick Denton, who gets all sorts of publicity for Gawker Media's entrepreneurial smarts, and you're in for a surprise – Gawker has only 55,000 on its list. (This blog, for those counting at home, has 61 subscribers.)
What's it take to do TV these days? TMZ has only 73,000 subscribers.
Why measure by RSS? Because RSS numbers are a good proxy for the immediate audience you can generate by simply posting. I think it's a better proxy than Twitter — Kos has almost 51,000 Twitter followers, without really trying. (Kos has about 16,000 Facebook friends. The site has had a presence there only since 2009.)
Now, what does it take to do TV? Not much. A camera, a set, maybe a video screen for teleconferencing. You don't have to do Cisco Telepresence with that stuff, either — Vidyo works just as well and it runs on a PC. OK, you need an ad staff, but what are they seeking ads to pay for? Just the out of pocket costs, and the costs of "talent."
Ah yes, talent. Talent is supposed to be very, very expensive. Well, Rob Corddry turned Childrens' Hospital into a Cartoon Network Adult Swim show, from a standing start as an online show, in less than a year.
See where this is going?
There is no reason why someone like Markos Moulitsas can't hire someone like Keith Olbermann to run a daily news show, pushed by his blog, that will draw an audience similar to what Olbermann had until recently at MSNBC.
I'm not talking politics. I'm talking technology and business. The Internet has reached a point in its evolution where it's quite able to swallow what we have long called the TV industry. Lots of people are complaining about the end of "net neutrality," believing Comcast is going to charge those who dare compete with its offerings for access to "its" customers. But it works both says. Comcast pays ESPN to offer its ESPN3 to Comcast Internet subscribers.
So my conclusion is simply that a market collision, long delayed, is about to take place. I may be a TV star yet!
