Monday, September 26, 2005

BuzzMachine ? Guardian column: Exploding TV

A TV revolution from the corner of the living room

Jeff Jarvis
Monday September 26, 2005
The Guardian

Television is exploding. Witness: A year ago, comedian and commentator Jon Stewart, star of the acclaimed American news satire The Daily Show, appeared on CNN’s left/right shout-show Crossfire to berate the hosts for their incessant arguing. “Stop, stop, stop hurting America,” Stewart pleaded. And stop they did, for Crossfire was soon cancelled.

That now-legendary TV moment was seen live on CNN by about 150,000 viewers. But then the segment was copied on to iFilm.com, where to date it has been viewed 3.25m times - plus countless millions more via BitTorrent and other file-sharing programs.

So which is more powerful: the gigantic, closed network owned by CNN? Or the network no one owns, the internet? And which has more potential? Well, just last week, PaidContent.org reported that another media giant, Viacom, was looking to buy iFilm. That is a sign that the real future of media is not centralised, controlled, and big but instead distributed, open, and small. (more)

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