Last Blogger

I was up late last night, unable to sleep and caught some of Stephen Colbert. I always find his interviews very entertaining, so I thought I’d watch. A gentleman by the name of Andrew Keen had come to Colbert’s show to speak about his new book. The book, “The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture” discusses many things that the Internet has “ruined”. Last night in particular, Mr. Keen seemed most interested in discussing the massive revenue losses that artists are suffering due to the Internet. While he didn’t get a chance to fully articulate his point, I suspect that what he was trying to get at was that everyone can access/download/copy whatever they want on the Internet, be it legal or not. This has a direct and immediate impact on artists bottom lines and abilities to survive by creating their masterpieces.

He chose Colbert as an example and asked how he made his money. Colbert explained the traditional TV model, network sells ads, advertisers pay network, network pays Stephen. He then asked how he makes money online once his content is there and available for distribution. Stephen commented that they sell T-shirts and mugs, but that was about it. Seems like a reasonable argument right? Sadly, not for me.

You see what individuals like Andrew Keen are doing is fear mongering over a change in financial models. This has occurred in the past before. Once artists created art for functionality, think totem poles. Then artists produced magnificent works for Kings and Queens, once those were overthrown, the idea of galleries suddenly became the way for a traditional artist to make money. Now the Internet has changed the landscape once more. Contrary to Mr. Keen’s opinion, there is a vast amount of money to be made online. Not just for the technically savvy who know how to game search engines either.

Now that the Comedy Network website is pretty much the only place to easily find Stewart/Colbert videos, how much traffic do you think that draws? What percent of them would be in the well-educated 20-30 range? That’s right, buckets of traffic and somewhere on the order of 115%. That demographic has money to burn in today’s economy. Now, let’s assume for a moment that the comedy network’s video delivery wasn’t horrible. How much do you think advertisers would pay to be visible while these clips are being played? That’s right, lots.

So here we find an artist who could be earning buckets of money online if his network had any sense. Unfortunately it’s people like Andrew Keen that convince the networks that traditional models are best and that they should fight anything new that comes along. Well unfortunately for Mr. Keen, history has shown that while these dinosaurs can cause a bit of a stir momentarily, they cannot stop the momentum of change.

Mr. Keen also took a jab at bloggers since they cherry pick facts and don’t do proper reporting like a true journalist should. I can’t argue that. Nobody can cherry pick facts like bloggers, but I would suggest that particularly in the US, though increasingly everywhere else, a journalist with unflappable integrity who presents all the facts and nothing but the facts is often an unemployed journalist. We need only look to the major news networks to see what a massive effect ratings have had on journalistic integrity.

We are simply on another step of a voyage we began a long time ago when the first coin was minted. Since then, our culture has been largely driven by one thing. The Internet has simply changed how we acquire money. It is no more or less evil than television and the radio were when they grew in popularity. So I leave these lumbering dinosaurs who despise the Internet to get comfortable because it’s going to be a long walk if you don’t want to get on board with us…

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