News > Ex Warner Bros Channel CEO says Mass Media is Ending
April 12, 2007
Jordan Levin, former CEO of WB television, recently stated that the days of mass, general media are over. Thanks to TiVo, YouTube, and torrenting, television and entertainment in general have become much more personalized industries. In the old days, the consumer had to plan his life around TV: today, TV has to plan around the consumer.
While Levin is pretty much right on the money (I don't think I've watched a single episode of House on the actual Fox channel, but I've seen every episode), his moral is an unfortunate one -- that TV is going to have to adapt and find new ways of harassing the shit out of everyday people. Sooner or later the networks are going to have to find a legal workaround to TiVo, or a way to insert more advertisements into actual programming (if anything, we have a lot more product placement to look forward to).
You can read the full speech at : it's uplifting and depressing at the same time. On the one hand, the users are taking control of the media. On the other hand, the media is bound to get wise sometime.
