‘Willing’ and ‘force’ are certainly some action-packed words! When there is going to be as much human suffering as I expect for the media sector in 2009, politicians inevitably get involved to moderate the market’s natural tendency to find a new equilibrium. Normally I would predict some form of government bailout, but unfortunately for the media sector they are right on the heels of some widely publicized bailout failures for both the auto and financial sectors, and I cannot imagine this discomfort for the North American media conglomerates being a priority for the new administration.

The end result? Probably still too early to tell. I envision some very low key (read weak!) support that can prop up the sector in the short term but under the radar enough to avoid taxpayer backlash. As opposed to outright cheques for working capital which are proving to be good money after bad, the support will likely take the form of financial incentives to encourage the mainstream to quickly evolve into The New Mainstream, which in itself is a dynamic work-in-progress. Basically still a bailout but dressed up to look like job creation.

The question in my mind is not really whether or not the media world is *willing* to make the “dramatic” changes quickly, but whether or not the market (or economy) is going to *force* dramatic changes.

The sad thing is that when the market forces changes, there is usually a lot of human suffering. I would much prefer a slower, curving trajectory that is led by good management and solid business innovation, but we’ll see what we actually get. Reality is rarely so kind.

I agree that the (mainstream) media industry as we have known it will not return; although I believe that initially technology played a role in that, as you indicate we are truly well and beyond. To a great degree, I think it’s directly related to the speed with which technology (and the way we embrace it) is advancing these days – much of it happening online within a truly collaborative context. And, yes, that does include “playing around” on Twitter: at the beginning of 2008, Twitter only had about 500,000 unique monthly visitors … but, in 12 months, that number has exploded to over 4.4 million – a phenomenal growth rate of over 750%. Will Twitter maintain that growth? Perhaps. (My gut tells me that we will see more and more conversations in the coming months about monetizing Twitter.)

Ultimately there seems to be no turning back as the power to choose, the power to click, the power to ignore is now fully in the hands of the reader/viewer. This is the paradigm that is being faced by traditional media: not just a technological shift, but a social one as well that goes against the very foundation of traditional media (invented, as Seth Godin once said “to sell ads to you”) … long gone are the days of just “pushing out” content from bloated newsrooms. In this day and (online) age, it seems the prized values – authenticity, sincerity, honesty – must also be a part of any hybrid model.