I heard this great piece on NPR earlier this week on how the promises made around the conversion to digital broadcast TV differ from the reality of today. (Short summary: the switch to digital created bandwidth for 4 digital channels for every existing analog channel. Broadcasters promised to fill those additional channels with more original, local content. That’s not happening.) What struck me is that the digital broadcast situation is no different than what ALL media channels are facing in their transition to digital. Eli Noam at Columbia University had a great quote in the piece:

“Whenever a new media is starting, there’s always the promise — the hope, really — of content that is local. … And then reality sets in — cold economic facts — and they tend to change the equation.”

What’s the reality? The cold economic fact is that the conversion to digital broadcast cost the industry about $10 billion. That’s a big chunk of change for essentially deploying a technology platform that gets the industry to the starting line of a new race. For the broadcast industry, the process of getting to the starting line means that they don’t have a lot of cash left to build more content to PUT ONTO that new technology platform/channel. This same scenario is playing out in other entertainment channels, especially for online audiences.The equation of the digital transition needs to change. Building technology platforms is not only NOT in media companies’ core skill set, but they also distract them (financially and resource-wise) from what they are really great at: creating and telling great stories. To quote someone far smarter than me: “It’s time to change”. Let’s not continue to disappoint consumers.