I think it’s easy to think in narrowly. It’s easy to think that if you’re in the restaurant business, you’re not competing against the car business. But, if you think about the fact that people have finite disposable income, then money spent on food, is money not spent on cars.
I think, with the advent of the internet the world has gotten smaller, and the advent of high-speed internet, the world has gotten EVEN smaller.
Now, in addition to competing for our disposable income, they’re also competing for our attention. People are no longer constrained to watch media on the air frequencies they can receive. No, not even bound to the programming their cable providers can provide. People now have unfettered access to media from the ENTIRE world. As great as this is towards furthering mankind’s understanding of one another, and appreciation of other people’s cultures. This introduces some very interesting problems.
Content producers, while partly, want to share their media with the world, also are businesses, and businesses exist to make profit, otherwise, they’d be called a charity. This is problematic because before, they only had to worry about competition from other air frequencies, possibly other cable channels… but now, they have to face the ENTIRE world.
I think, this is great for society as a whole, but I can see how this is bad for businesses, losing their grip on that geological monopoly.
The world is getting smaller, and sure, the landscape is getting tougher, but at the same time, before, you were the king of a small hill called your country, now, you can be the king of the world. If properly managed, your domain will reign much further than before, and perhaps, you can even profit greater than before; IF managed properly.