How Television Won the Internet

[Commentary] Online-media revolutionaries once figured they could eat TV’s lunch by stealing TV’s business model — more free content, more advertising. Online media is now drowning in free. Google and Facebook, the universal aggregators, control the traffic stream and effectively set advertising rates. Their phenomenal traffic growth has glutted the ad market, forcing down rates. Digital publishers, from The Guardian to BuzzFeed, can stay ahead only by chasing more traffic — not loyal readers, but millions of passing eyeballs, so fleeting that advertisers naturally pay less and less for them. Meanwhile, the television industry has been steadily weaning itself off advertising — like an addict in recovery, starting a new life built on fees from cable providers and all those monthly credit-card debits from consumers. Today, half of broadcast and cable’s income is non-advertising based. And since adult household members pay the cable bills, TV content has to be grown-up content.

Looking for irony? Television, once maniacally driven by Nielsen ratings, has gone upscale as online media becomes an absurd traffic game. TV figured out how to monetize stature and influence. Nobody knows how many people saw “House of Cards,” and nobody cares. Mass-market TV upgraded to class, while digital media — listicles, saccharine viral videos — chased lowbrow mass.

Television, not digital media, is mastering the model of the future: Make ’em pay. And the corollary: Make a product that they’ll pay for.