Ya know, I can't help but think of MTV. Back in the late '70s all of the radio stations in the US were turning corporate, being bought up by chains and switchin

Ya know, I can't help but think of MTV. Back in the late '70s all of the radio stations in the US were turning corporate, being bought up by chains and switching to boring, top 40s styles, playing the same songs all the time in order to rack up the ad revenue. MTV was launched at this same time but when it hit the air it had a problem, most songs didn't have music videos. So they ended up playing a lot of songs they wouldn't have otherwise, and accidentally played an eclectic mix of music. Which was like a breath of fresh air to the youth of the day, who had been abandoned by radio. MTV became hugely popular and helped gain popularity for a wide variety of different music that might not have become nearly as popular otherwise. In general, corporate interests will result in less risk taking and thus less diversity and less eccentric content. You see the same thing in hollywood, where there is massive risk aversion. Which reminds me of the Space Shuttle. People thought that the Shuttle was well tested near the end of its run of 130-odd flights, but it really wasn't. Because those were operational flights, not test flights, every single one of them attempted to stay as much in the center of the performance envelope as possible. So the performance envelope of the Shuttle was not actually well known, despite having flown over 100 flights. The vast majority of content producers who rely on ad revenue make the same estimations about risk, and try to stay away from the edges of the "risk envelope" for profitable content, with obvious implications for diversity and quality. The only real solution is to greater enable individual content creation. In some respects the modern web is great at that, but for content such as existed back when the web was young and weird it is less so.