Not sure what you mean by the media industry working fine on an ad-based model. If you mean it makes money then possibly it does, but if you mean that it typica

Not sure what you mean by the media industry working fine on an ad-based model. If you mean it makes money then possibly it does, but if you mean that it typically manages to remain a trustworthy independent source of news/reviews etc, then I'd strongly suggest that it fails quite badly. Advertisers threatening to pull their accounts because the publication/channel has done something they don't like is the most visible manifestation of this, but the modern newspaper industry is basically run at the behest of advertisers and the typical output of these papers (just look at the amount of PR-driven stories that make it into the average paper on a daily basis) largely reflects this.