We Get Some Press in Murdoch’s Daily iPad ‘Newspaper’

Ultra-tiny processors portend future of cheap, high-quality video

BY NICHOLAS DELEON TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2012

 

A story that made waves in the science press last week could have massive consequences for an industry that’s already under intense pressure.

Researchers from Australia, South Korea and the U.S. have jointly developed a transistor — the tiny “on/off” switch that helped spark the computer revolution — that’s the size of a single atom. The hope is that such a transistor could be used in the next generation of ultra-small processors that will power everything from mainframe computers to impossibly thin smartphones.

And that, according to Rosenblum TV chief executive Michael Rosenblum, is exactly what has traditional content creators like Disney and NBC Universal so worried.

“These guys are dead,” Rosenblum told The Daily. “They’re finished, and there’s nothing they can do to stop that. The best they can hope for is to delay the inevitable.”

Rosenblum, who’s been in video journalism for more than 20 years working with companies like the BBC, the New York Times, and The Guardian, believes that the proliferation of such tiny powerful, processors means that the cost of production video will plummet so far that it will essentially be free.

The result, as he recently relayed on his blog: “The whole idea that a tiny handful of people, fewer than .01 percent of the global population, once created the content that the other 99.99 percent watched passively will seem as crazy as the idea that the only books you could have were Bibles and they were handwritten by a few monks over years in a monastery.”

“Technology has always been the immutable driver of change,” he said. “An iPhone already produces broadcast-quality video, and for $5 you can download the iMovie app and edit everything you shoot. The economics of the business don’t make much sense when the cost of content production drops to zero.”

This won’t happen overnight, of course, with Rosenblum giving the traditional corporate-controlled content production business another 20 years.

Until then, we can expect to see more and more legislation, like the Stop Online Piracy Act, designed to dull the impact of the effects of technology.

After all, he said, “Nobody dies quietly.”

 

Michael Rosenblum

For more than 30 years, Michael Rosenblum has been on the cutting edge of the digital video journalism revolution. During this time, he has lead a drive for video literacy, and the complete rethinking of how television is made and controlled. His work has included: The complete transitioning of The BBC's national network (UK) to a VJ-driven model, starting in 2002. The complete conversion of The Voice of America, the United State's Government's broadcasting agency, (and the largest broadcaster in the world), from short wave radio to television broadcasting and webcasting using the VJ paradigm (1998-present). The construction of NYT Television, a New York Times Company, and the largest producer of non-fiction television in the US. Rosenblum was both the founder and President of NYT TV, (all based on this paradigm (1996-1998). The President and Founder of Video News International, a global VJ-driven newsgathering company, with more than 100 journalists around the world. (1993-1996). Other clients include Spectrum News, Verizon and CBS News.