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 BlodgetAlmost any show that has reviewers behind it, Rotten Tomatoes behind it, will find a way to survive.
Henry BlodgetBefore the internet, a journalist would write an article about a company that the company felt was unfair and missed a point. All they could do was write a letter to the editor and wait, and maybe a week later it would be printed, or not. Now, they can go to medium.com and immediately publish a long rebuttal, saying the journalist forgot this and did not consider that, the analyst is wrong here. Everybody pulls that immediately into the debate. So it is a much more democratic field for ideas.
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