• Broadcasting & Cable, Thursday, January 18, 2007 10:45 AM

"The age of the blockbuster is over," Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson pronounced to a group of television executives during his keynote at the annual National Association of Television Program Executives conference in Las Vegas. That theme, of course, is echoed in Anderson's widely cited work on the future of media fragmentation, "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More," which he was presumably there to promote.

During his speech, Anderson championed sites like YouTube and chided anachronisms, like this one from IAC/InterActive Corp. chairman Barry Diller: "People with talent won't be displaced by 18 million people producing stuff they think will have appeal." The future of video is a battle for eyeballs between professionally produced and user-produced content, Anderson said, which ultimately means smaller audiences for everybody.

That raises the question of how actors, writers and producers will be compensated in the future. "Ad supported--fully-supported programming --is not out there [online] in any meaningful way," Robert Broder, vice chairman of the talent agency ICM, pointed out. Even so, video ad growth may not be enough; as Anderson notes, the future of professional content may be budget cuts, squeezed margins and lower pay.

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