Frequently, I come across brilliant writing that makes me feel like a very weak communicator.  Umair Haque is a writer/thinker that is the author of many of these.  He has a brilliant recent post titled Strategy 2006, in which he discusses the upcoming revolution in the media industry, in a list format.  He concludes with:

    11) The world becomes a much more interesting place…

I agree with Umair, but think he’s underestimating the upcoming impact.  One of the reasons why I feel that he’s underestimating is the breakneck speed that the media companies are formulating their video strategies.  Proof?

Google’s Video Initiative
ABC & Apple
Fox & DirectTV
Yahoo!’s Video Moves
Mainstream News Online
Microsoft, Sony and Starz: Vongo

Notice these are all links to old media outlets.  Also notice that the oldest of these articles is 5 days old (OK, that’s a bit biased because of the CES).  So, this is not blogsphere jabber.   According to Marketwatch’s Bambi Francisco (free registration req’d):

"It took iTunes about a third of the time, or one week, to sell 1 million songs back in April 2003, when the iTunes Music Store launched
with just 200,000 titles. Now, less than three years later, iTunes has
more than 2 million titles from record labels and independent artists
and has already become the No. 7 music retailer, according to NPD."

So I am expecting the visual media industry (TV, film & video) to learn quickly what the music industry has painfully learn.