Response to Next Media

Five years from now I think the media landscape will not be too terribly different from the way it is today. It all depends on the underlying technology and I really don't think anything major will occur in the next five years. I am a little confused on how I feel about printed materials such as magazines. I personally like magazines such as sports illustrated and espn the magazine because of the articles written in them. Sure some of the scores and things are outdated in the magazines by the time they come up, but 200 word blog entries in my opinion cannot possibly replace three page articles written by professional writers. In the end it's all about money. If the market for magazines and newspapers isn't large enough people will stop producing them.

I don't believe famous bloggers will ever reach the level of notoriety that celebrities and athletes do. The chief reason I believe this is because most people who aren't seen in the public eye aren't that famous. I'm talking about people like writers and radio hosts. Members of these professions don't often gain a high level of notoriety because they aren't seen. Athletes and celebrities on the other hand, are seen in movies and sporting event so they are easily recognizable. Also, bloggers don't always list their names so they themselves probably will not become famous, rather their blog or online persona might. For these reasons I believe that bloggers as a whole will be nor more likely to be famous than writers or other people who are not seen by the public.

As far as television goes, I don't see any way possible that it will be gone in fifty years. There's too much invested in it, and it's so much a part of our lives that I think it will take more than fifty years to remove it from our lives. I think people read news online and shop online because it's more convenient. I don't think that watching television online is any more convenient than watching television normally. I think television may move to a more on demand style where people can choose what they want to watch, but the television will still have to be there. You also have to consider the massive bandwidth bottleneck that would occur if everyone was watching television online instead of on their tv sets.