IP, iPhone will change broadcast industry

The impact of companies that distribute user created content like YouTube and blip.tv, plus products like Apple’s iPhone and AppleTV, Sling Media’s Slingbox, and Samsung’s Advanced VSB [A-VSB], will shake up both the media/broadcast and telecom industries.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at the site RocketBoom, which hosts a daily, three-minute video blog; or see what happened to its former star Amanda Congdon, who was getting about 1 million hits per day for her show. She is being signed up by HBO and ABC.

But someday, companies like RocketBoom will have huge revenues from advertising, so that they will be able to counter-offer the pot of gold that ABC or HBO offers Internet stars like Amanda Congdon and then, holy smoke, we will really see major changes in the broadcast industry and the mindless junk it offers us.

The way it works now, according to Mike Hudack, CEO at blip.tv, is a small number of companies have a monopoly of broadcast spectrum.

They can go out and negotiate aggressively with any content provider. They simply have to remind the creative side that you can’t get to a mass market without them.

And this is also true for telecom and its content providers.

It is true that due to the limited spectrum they make huge bets on content. So, as Hudack says it is actually inefficient for both the creators and the distributors.

The content provider gets paid on the upside, and often paid quite well. But if the show is a hit the distributor/broadcaster makes it up on the backside while the creator just gets to produce more shows.

The new delivery mechanisms, all IP, changes all that.

IP and the digital devices it uses gives everyone a freedom to be heard and seen that is unprecedented in the history of the world.

The question is will it be allowed to continue unfettered by either government or private enterprise trying to take back their monopolies?

Well, let’s enjoy the ride while it lasts.