Bear Sterns research published their Long Tail assessment of the state of Television which they see as shifting to content owner. Among other observations they feel that “Aggregation and Context” will be king and not content.

Slide 11 has an interesting comparison of the "Economy of Scarcity" verses the "Economy of Abundance" matching unlimited content with an optimal supply/demand mix.

While there is an unlimited amount of content chasing eyeballs, the question from my perspective is in creating networks and applications which allow for content convergence, to enable media to follow people from platform to platform in an easy to use fashion. Currently, the technical sophistication for the average citizen, still the vast majority of TV viewers is too high and complex. After all, from the latest reports I've read only about 9 or 10% of the public are using DVR's and that figure may be less for Slingbox or NeuLion type devices.

On slide 13, one of their questions is "Will Niche User Generated Content Find a Audience" Of course that has already been answered, the question is can content creators afford to create content for Internet TV and IPTV distribution for niche audiences? Business Week had a very good article in the December 4th issue, "You Oughta be In Webcasts" While there were examples of low budget, professionally produced niche content projects resonating with audiences, there still is the challenge of making a living. In talking about the show, The Burg the article spoke to the financial obstacles still facing Indie producers.

" Advertisers, including Dewar's, have approached the shows creator, Kathleen Grace, about running video ads ahead of the episodes. The rates are competitive with those of rich media ads offered on other sites, she says, but since they're based on the hits a site gets and her audience is only about 10,000 per episode, any ad revenue generated won't even cover her bandwidth costs, let alone pay the cast and crew. (The show is currently self-financed.)"

What changes to the mix are required in order for this show to succeed financially? A few thoughts come to mind.

- Audience share goes up, which translates in to increased ad revenue and more advertisers
- Equipment costs comes down (they are likely already shooting on low cost DV gear)
- Bandwidth costs comes down (not likely in the short term)
- Show generated significant media buzz and gets picked up by a studio
- Other?

The rest of the Bear Sterns report covers market players, size and share metrics and is well worth reading.