The Future of TV

Via Kottke, here's an article written by Michael Hirschorn in March '09 edition of The Atlantic, titled "The Future Is Cheese," about how--starting soon--it won't make financial sense for TV networks to produce high-priced, character-heavy shows, a k a, good TV. Lots of good stuff here, including this:

As network television takes up a lower-brow position in the cultural pecking order, the higher-quality, more expensive shows will become increasingly independent of the networks that broadcast them. Eventually, networks will stop being brands and start becoming, at least in part, mere “distribution platforms,” a first stop for cultural products on their long journey through other digital media, subscription services, and mobile devices—more like movie-theater chains, in other words, than like movie studios of yore. Just as a premiere in a movie house now largely serves as a way to market the DVD, or sell products, so too is the TV “premiere” just a billboard for the show’s future life.