Nancy went to the Monaco Media Forum last week, and brought back a recommendation to check out one of the keynote speakers, Jeffrey Cole.

Cole is the director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg.  He also runs the World Internet Project, which is a longitudinal study about media usage and how that usage has changed since the widespread adoption of the computers and the internet.

The most interesting bit for me was his point of view that every medium has had to adapt at some point in its life:  The movies and radio industries had to when television was born, for example.  The music industry today, because it is based on a “model of extortion”, charging $16 for a whole CD when all we want is a couple of tracks.

Today, because of our ability to seek out and choose so many varied sources and kinds of content, every single medium is shrinking.

Except for television.

Cole predicts that TV will explode, continuing to become bigger and bigger.  We’ll take our TV shows with us everywhere we go — the airport, our commute, the back of the seat on the airplane — filling in any potentially bored space in our lives.  We’ll watch our TV whenever and wherever, whole shows at a time or broken into many multiple increments, as it pleases us.

Maybe that’s a no brainer.  I mean, I already take me TV with me to some degree.  But I hadn’t thought about the implications of it on the television industry.  The key to it, I think, is the industry’s ability to monetize all the new and various forms and platforms of content.  And to set up a fair pricing model so we are pushed to just download it illegally.

Regardless, have a look at Cole’s speech — there’s a ton more in there besides this one point.  It’s worth it.

And thanks, Nancy!