Fifteen years ago, nobody thought that content would ever work as a business. It was impossible to raise any money, initial investments were $10,000, seldom $100,000. It is only over the last two or three years that we have started to see very large amounts of capital coming into the digital industry. That has created a lot more competition.
Henry BlodgetMy mission is to figure out the journalistic model for the digital medium, finding out how we get the right stories readers want, at the right time and wherever they want to read them.
Henry BlodgetPeople have been predicting the death of television for 20 years now, and so far it's been entirely wrong. But it does seem viewership habits are starting to change.
Henry BlodgetBefore the internet, big publications were like hydrants in the desert. There were relatively few of them, we needed each one of them tremendously and they had control over what was delivered. Now they are like little streams flowing into a massive ocean.
Henry BlodgetPornography works to a degree, high quality works, bad is obvious. Nobody goes for bad. The terrible middle ground is the mediocre. That was kind of the essence, in a way, of broadcast television when there were only three channels.
Henry BlodgetWhen CNN launched in the early 1980s, everybody said: A 24-hour news network won't work. They launched, they did ok, CNN went almost bankrupt because of the risks they had taken, they got bailed out, and 25 years later CNN is a huge global brand. I think the same is going to happen in digital. If you look at the younger generation, there is a huge consumption of digital media and almost no consumption of print or traditional television. Eventually money will follow that. It is just a question of which companies win, how long it takes to get there and what kind of model you need to apply.
Henry Blodget