Sagan: TV Survival Means Hyper-Local Online Video

[Commentary] Broadcasters are about to experience the equivalent of the Big Bang, warns Akamai Technologies CEO Paul Sagan, a broadcast and cable veteran whose company facilitates more than one-fifth of the world's Web traffic. The ability to match high-definition TV picture quality with Internet interactivity is creating a sea change for online video that will begin rippling through the television industry in 2010. Only TV station owners that leap to the new arena, playing the strength of their hyper-local connections, will survive. "The dominos are going to fall. The television industry is going to feel the impact of the Internet that music and print have suffered through," Sagan said. "It will change everything about television production, distribution, advertising -- where revenues come from and how wealth is created." Traditional content producers and distributors that are among Akamai's deep client base are in peril; their audiences are rapidly migrating to the Internet. Too many broadcasters are obsessing about cannibalizing their content instead of using the efficiency and convenience of interactivity to expand their local power base.