Chris Anderson is the editor of Wired Magazine and author of the business best-seller, "The Long Tail". In the book, he argues that cumulatively, all of the non-hits and specialized offerings in "the Long Tail" represent a large market that can be easily aggregated on the Internet. Plotted on a graph along with best sellers, these specialized products trail off like a long tail that never reaches zero.

Levi Shapiro of IPTV Evangelist spoke with Chris prior to his Keynote address at NATPE, the article will appear in Video Age magazine

VA: In 1953, the biggest hit on TV was "I Love Lucy", with 70% of TV household. Today, the number one show on Monday nights during November sweeps was "Deal or No Deal", with six million viewers. Is the hit dead?

CA: I don't think the hit will ever die. What has changed is the extent of choice. For fifty years, distribution scarcity drove behavior rather than genuine consumer preferences. Now that viewers have a real choice, they clearly don't necessarily want their programming in 30 minute content blocks. So the hit will survive, but the long-tail can also thrive.

VA: Who will be the winners in a world where the long tail is a viable economic model?

CA: The internet diminishes the scarcity of access to distribution. Once upon a time, the only programming I could watch were the shows using the spectrum on the three national networks. In the present environment, I think small and medium sized content owners have a great chance of reaching niche audiences. We coined the term "Slivercasting" to describe the opportunity for monetizing niche micro audiences.

VA: What is Slivercasting?

CA: Sliver-casting is leveraging lower distribution costs to reach a specific niche and audience. Even these niches can have millions of people, like immigrant or expatriate communities. There are thousands of producers whose programming would never make it into prime time but who have highly dedicated small audiences. It is a phenomenon that could be called slivercasting. One example is the clip "Evolution of Dance", which was viewed over 35 million times on YouTube. By any measure, that is an enormous audience. The Long Tail starts with a million niches, but it isn't meaningful until those niches are populated with people who want them.

VA: Is there a long-tail opportunity for the big guys, too?

CA: After a hit show airs, it immediately moves further down the long tail. I think we are already seeing hits like LOST being viewed by smaller audiences on platforms other than television, such as video iPods, ABC.com and VCast.

VA: Is this just about the internet?

CA: The internet is important because if has reduced the scarcity of distribution to a point where viewers now have inventory on demand. However, this is really about pent-up consumer demand that was too costly to meet. The real opportunity of television programming is to unleash the power of serving people's special interests. That wasn't possible in the previous distribution model.

Besides the video-sharing sites like Grouper, Guba, iFilm, Metacafe, Revver, Veoh, etc, there are now profitable, specialized video services serving specialties like poker, bicycling, lacrosse, photography, vegetarian cooking, fine wine, horror films, obscure sitcoms and Japanese anime.

VA: Is the Long-Tail bringing people together?

CA: Instead of the office watercooler, which crosses cultural boundaries, we're increasingly forming our own tribes, groups bound together by affinity and shared interests. These days the watercoolers are virtual and the people who gather around them are self-selected.

VA: What does the long tail mean for incumbent content creators?

CA: Infinite choice and convenience means we will inevitably watch more television, just as the average amount of time spent watching TV increased with the transition from broadcast to cable to digital. Hit shows will endure but will be smaller in an environment of unlimited choice. We have already seen branded content redistributed to other formats and platforms, such as the SNL "Lazy Sunday" sketch, which was seen by exponentially more viewers on YouTube than NBC. Niche, user generated content will have an audience because, in some form or another, everybody's taste diverges from the mainstream.

VA: Who will be the winners and losers in a world of unlimited choice?

CA: The real winner is the consumer, who finally has a market structure that reflects an abundance of choice, rather than a scarcity of distribution. The value of aggregation, whether through YouTube or Yahoo or someone else, will increase as consumers seek assistance to connect with content that appeals to their specific interests. The smaller content producers will also benefit as they finally have access to distribution.