• USA Today, Thursday, April 13, 2006 12 PM

USA Today technology columnist Kevin Maney, noticing that his inbox is lately overflowing with news about broadcasters making their valuable content available on the Web, this week asks the obvious question: Why? What has suddenly persuaded old-media chieftains to give away, totally free or for pennies, the content they have so long protected?  The answer is ... money.  The Web is still in its early stages of development as a mass medium, and consequently virtually everyone is using it for inexpensive experimentation with business models.  Maney: "Media analyst Gary Arlen, who is at the cable industry's trade show in Atlanta, says the experiments are the talk of the show. The many frantic moves are 'partly desperation and partly recognition (by old-mediaexecs) that they must do something to salvage their failing roles and their diminishing and distracted audiences,' Arlen says."  Maney concludes that "it all adds up to a tipping point or strategic inflection point or that moment when the coffee starts perking.... The established industry has come to feel safe experimenting online. Ad sales have mushroomed. Technology has made experimentation cheap and easy. And a sense of fear--of not wanting to get Napstered all over again--has created urgency."

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