YouTV

When in need of a way to quench some strange thirst for seeing people act like jackasses or to just find a moment of reprieve from a long night of homework, millions of people turn to Youtube.com for their daily fix. The website has already established itself as the number one source of video content across the world wide web and the $1.65B price tag proves this fact. With its enormous power to present videos, Youtube is considered a primary outlet for showcasing a strange talent or remixing your favorite (or least favorite) song, etc. If none of your family or friends wants to hear you rant about some insignificant snippet of pop culture, you can rest assured that a couple hundred thousand people on Youtube will give you your three minutes of fame. The beauty behind the system is this fact itself. Youtube allows complete amateurs to post something that may or may not be interesting, leaving it up to the Youtube gauntlet of video views and Internet popularity to determine the video’s worth. With its mass media appeal Youtube puts entertainment back into the hands of the common man, women, or obscure animal. But should this power really belong to a bunch of nobodies? There is no real way to answer this question yet we can clearly see as access to Internet entertainment grows, traditional media popularity begins to tire out.
Youtube is ultimately a catalyst. The website is forcing traditional media to either adapt or die out. As we can see in this theory of media natural selection, other traditional media corporations such as NBC and FOX are forced to release internet players where I can enjoy last week’s episode of Heroes despite having missed the original airing. This radical evolution of media brings up questions of advertising and the future of entertainment itself. My 25-year prediction: The death of TV and supreme rule of Internet entertainment ~ YouTV if you will.