3 ms·

The same stuff that entertains us today and entertained us 20 years ago. It seems clear that "lean forward" electronic entertainment ("video games") will reach

The same stuff that entertains us today and entertained us 20 years ago. It seems clear that "lean forward" electronic entertainment ("video games") will reach a larger proportion of society as game developers figure out how to simulate a broader range of activities (let's take the obvious example: sex), while "lean backward" entertainment will still have its place. I've been predicting the near future death of broadcast TV for fifteen years. I still think it's close, but the content producers need to wean themselves from the broadcast networks, while remain the main mechanism for funding long-form content. The movie industry is already pretty much dead, reduced to producing amusement park rides (nothing wrong with that, but storytelling has been ceded to indies and TV). So, in a nutshell: * Radio stays as it is * Broadcast (I mean this in the "central model with a schedule sense, not the over-the-air sense") TV becomes like radio (throw-away content with commercials; possibly some subscriber funded content such as PBS/NPR or even HBO may survive) * Movies become more-and-more like amusement park rides * TV entertainment becomes on-demand and probably keeps getting better and better and more and more ubiquitous * Interactive gaming gains reach as it finds more niches Nothing revolutionary.

VLM 13y ago
The killer app for broadcasting is live sporting events, and "events" ranging from nice peaceful music concert to unfortunately humanity will continue to have onsite news reports of disasters. Locally radio is nothing but top-40, live sports, political propaganda, and infotainment "morning shows". TV is rapidly evolving toward the same point, now with pictures. If you search for "old time radio" you can find decades old mp3 files of radio dramas. Exactly the same topics on radio as are now on TV (action, drama, cop/lawyer/dr shows, etc) Broadcast TV is headed the same direction... inevitably someday you will see the last broadcast "cop show" as the whole genre moves to pay per view/youtube/itunes/whatever. I'm not clear how marketer types will promote show release times. Download the new episode of "Barney Miller 2014" at 5pm EST today or whatever. There's probably a great startup opportunity in "handling" how new episodes are made available. Not just the technical side (thats all solved) but the economic / practical side. Maybe an auction where the highest bid class at a certain time gets it two hours before steerage but its free for everyone tomorrow. Another peculiar, possibly unworkable startup idea is something like etsy for radio drama. Or a virtual network. Once it becomes retro enough to be cool, you'll have people lining up for it. There are individuals working in this field today, but the closest thing to a network or industry-wide scale effort is probably twit.tv and their audio versions.

VLM 13y ago

The killer app for broadcasting is live sporting events, and "events" ranging from nice peaceful music concert to unfortunately humanity will continue to have onsite news reports of disasters. Locally radio is nothing but top-40, live sports, political propaganda, and infotainment "morning shows". TV is rapidly evolving toward the same point, now with pictures. If you search for "old time radio" you can find decades old mp3 files of radio dramas. Exactly the same topics on radio as are now on TV (action, drama, cop/lawyer/dr shows, etc) Broadcast TV is headed the same direction... inevitably someday you will see the last broadcast "cop show" as the whole genre moves to pay per view/youtube/itunes/whatever. I'm not clear how marketer types will promote show release times. Download the new episode of "Barney Miller 2014" at 5pm EST today or whatever. There's probably a great startup opportunity in "handling" how new episodes are made available. Not just the technical side (thats all solved) but the economic / practical side. Maybe an auction where the highest bid class at a certain time gets it two hours before steerage but its free for everyone tomorrow. Another peculiar, possibly unworkable startup idea is something like etsy for radio drama. Or a virtual network. Once it becomes retro enough to be cool, you'll have people lining up for it. There are individuals working in this field today, but the closest thing to a network or industry-wide scale effort is probably twit.tv and their audio versions.