How the Internet Will Devour, Transform, or Destroy Your Favorite Medium: On the demise of books, newspapers, music and movies

Now, maybe film studios can do what Magnolia Pictures is doing -- distributing day-and-date releases to satellite, pay-per-view, cinema, DVD, and foreign film outlets -- and recapture a lot of the money that is squirting between the fingers of the tightly clenched release-window fist. But if it's not enough, commercially motivated BBMs might simply die.

Note that movies as a genre won't vanish. There's plenty to love about 9-minute YouTubes and the quirky features that come out of indie production houses. There's never been a time when more moving pictures were being produced and viewed than today. Many of these things are economic propositions, and many are not -- they're a lot more like stage shows than they are like films. They cost less to produce, they reach smaller, more targetted audiences, and they represent an admirable diversity of voice and point of view. But they're not Big, Culturally Relevant Media in the way that a real classic BBM can be.