Updated: 2006-04-06

You gotta love Om Malik’s blog called Om Malik’s Broadband Blog. Om is one of the most prolific bloggers around. You can find Om’s blog listed in my Zoinger Bloglines public area ( in addition to most of the other blogs that I read regularly ). Om’s blog is in the Communications folder. I’m still adding blogs to Bloglines from my old-school bookmarking method of blog consumption.

Back to the subject of this post, an article in today’s WSJ TV Networks Go Online to Capture Wider Viewership reports on how TV Networks like MTV, The Food Network and others are launching new broadband “channels.” Of course, Om beat me to the punch on this one and has a post on this article here. Om comments that if the TV Networks really got it that they would be making use of torrents to distribute their content. Totally agreed, but of course, this would require some out-of-the-box thinking on the networks part… not just reacting to the fact that their viewers are going elsewhere to find content.

Where are viewers going? Simply follow the money. In this case it’s advertising dollars (yes, a trailing indicator, but one none the less). This year advertising dollars, as reported in the WSJ article, are forecasted to grow: For network TV about 2%, cable 10% and the internet 25%.