Why Googleworld will beat Murdoch

Ten years ago, we lived in BBC-world - a closed broadcasting system, advertising monopolies, programme-making priesthoods, and captured audiences. Then we had Murdochworld in which the consumer was given a choice from among (relatively) high quality content providers corralled into a walled garden with high barriers to entry.

Now we have Googleworld, in which the consumer is given a genuinely free choice of hundreds of millions of content providers, including other people like them. Googleworld content will be saved to broadband-enabled Sky-plus boxes, PlayStation3s, X-box2s, and the next generation of DVD players.

For television, the near future will be a struggle between Murdochworld and Googleworld. But I would not bet on Murdochworld in the long run. The internet and Starbucks demonstrate that fundamentally we love choice more than anything else. Googleworld will give us access via the TV terminal to all the drama, news, music, games, public services, and arts we could possibly want, and content suppliers will struggle to get our attention. So why in the long run would we make do with a mere 200 channels for which we pay a subscription? No chance. And no chance of regulating most of it. The only signpost will be "google search".

Read the article: www.media.guardian.co.uk