What do you wanna watch?

old_television.jpgIsn’t it neat to think about how our access to entertainment has evolved?  Television brought free entertainment right into our living rooms and created an instant revolution. Of course, before the invention of the VCR, if you had a favorite show, your best hope was to catch it in a rerun if you wanted to see it again, and you might have one shot at that during the summer or something. Once the show went off the air, maybe you’d get lucky and see it in syndication, but you’d have to view it on somebody else’s time table. 
Today, you can buy DVDs of just about any show, or digitally record them commercial-free, or download them to your MP3 player and watch them whenever and wherever you want. Or you can download a movie or TV show or whatever and watch it on your computer or smartphone instantly.
I predict one of these days, and perhaps very soon, you can get digital downloads of just about anything that was ever broadcast, and at super fast speed. There are bazillions of feet of film sitting in warehouses somewhere just waiting for the right media to make it profitable for it to be seen again. Places like Hulu are already experimenting with one such business model, so it’ll probably be here before you know it.
Then, underrated shows like 240-Robert, where my buddy, Mark Harmon, got his start, can get the appreciation they always so richly deserved!
That’s the  miracle marketing performs in a free market economy, and most of us take it for granted. Marketers and entrepreneurs find out if enough customers are interested in something, then we go about finding a cost-effective way to deliver and we profit for doing so! One of the greatest contributions of marketing is the more convenient delivery of the “product” to the customer! In this case, the customer will benefit from being able to watch whatever they want to watch whenever they want to watch it. The owners of the footage will profit by getting new revenue from an existing asset. It’s an absolute win-win and it’s all made possible through technology!
Before you completely devalue any asset, consider whether new technology might make that asset more valuable again. You may find that it’s possible to breathe some profitable life back into what looks like a dead or dying product. Keep that in mind next time you’re taking inventory!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future

 

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