Mass Media Meltdown?

According to his column in the New York Post yesterday, John Podhoretz says that the American media is in the midst of an industry-wide "meltdown." He cites box office numbers that have been down for the past nine weeks, a continued drop in newspaper circulation, the loss of prime time viewership for television networks and the fact that talk radio audiences have continuously plummeted since the 2004 elections.

There is no doubt that the mass media in this country is in the midst of a huge identity crisis and has failed to keep up with technology to compete with its digital counterparts like satellite radio, blogs, pod casts and more.

Many mainstream news outlets are just now putting time, energy and money into a decent online presence.

With that said, I hesitate to state that the "sky is falling." After all, many said that radio would die after the TV become common place in homes and those same "experts" said that the VCR and DVD player would kill movie theaters. There will always be a marketplace for traditional forms of entertainment and information. Although, it is not clear whether or not the network newscast will survive for much longer.