Did Video Really Kill the Radio Star?

Sometime during the 2000-01 academic year, the New York Times Magazine wrote a stellar article detailing how upstart companies TiVo and Replay would kill broadcast television.

I had a newborn then. She's almost 7. TV marches on.

This week Ad Age's Bob Garfield has written about "Chaos Scenario 2.0."

Once again this damned Internet is killing TV and newspapers.

I see the evidence. It's not a great day to make newspapers or buggy harnesses.

Garfield makes good points. The change is upon us. But as I sit here typing, Comedy Central is showing South Park to my left.

There's that damned annoying Burger King ad with the ballerinas.

You see, this Internet thing takes work. I have to pay a lot of attention. I have to interact. In a minute, I will click "Publish" and lean back and watch the new South Park. And I don't want to interact. I want to be entertained.

And that's not going to change. And as long as there are millions of us, there will be some room for mass media.

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Quotation of the article: "I always found Marshall McLuhan annoying," says Bruce M. Owen, senior fellow at Stanford University and author of the seminal "Television Economics," "but the medium conditions the message. It's already happening."

P.S. The video killed the radio star was Garfield's metaphor for the Internet killing TV. Funny, but I listened to the radio today. If anything, deregulation killed the radio star.