Television is the last medium to move online, but it may be first to get it right, reflects MSNBC columnist Michael Rogers. As marketers push more of their dollars online, TV is embracing the Internet
with a big advantage, he says: "As the last medium to come to the Web, they have some history to look back on. And both print and the music industry provide key lessons in what not to do." The former,
he notes, started out giving everything away with the mistaken assumption they could make it all up in ad revenue or by charging later on while the latter was too afraid of upsetting its distribution
system to embrace downloadable music early enough. Now that it is TV's turn to leap, "it almost looks like an industry-wide research project, throwing a half-dozen business models at the wall to see
which ones stick." And as soon as the winners are clear, "you can bet the rest will follow--television executives are, if nothing else, very good at copying each other."
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