He said that the networks seem to be concerned that the enormous revenue streams targeted at these dumb televisions will go away if they change the model. Schmi

He said that the networks seem to be concerned that the enormous revenue streams targeted at these dumb televisions will go away if they change the model. Schmidt disagrees. He thinks people will watch even more television if it’s augmented with the Internet. I can't imagine why they'd be worried. It's not like other advertising driven revenue models that came online earlier have been getting ground down into pulp or anything. The networks are in the business of selling advertising (and buying or producing content as advertising delivery vehicles). What's more, they get the lions share of the money spend on TV advertising - there aren't substantial amounts being bled off to intermediaries. Google is in the business of selling advertising, but not content. And they are in the business of standing between the advertiser and the content producer and taking a hefty percentage of the dollars spent on advertising. And they've proven to be very adept at business. A large amount of advantage major networks hold over even cable channels is their ability to deliver large audiences to ad buyers. Because everything is pretty manual and there is no big auction network or the like, an ad buyer can't easily purchase the same reach of say 5M households that the network provides by placing their ads on 1000 programs each with 5000 viewers. Once it's just as easy or easier to reach your audience through many small programs, the money will start to flow away from big TV and into smaller productions. That money will allow the upstarts to increase production value, competing more effectively. And whatever money is still going to the major networks will be getting a substantial slice taken out by the intermediaries and their "value add". But Eric Schmidt says it won't be a problem. I mean, they can trust google, right?