Another Nail in the Network Coffin

The New York Times today is reporting about NBC planning to buy blocks of programming from outside producers. Although apparently unrelated to the writers' strike, it's just another facet of the changing business climate and how networks, long grown fat on easy money, often creatively channeled away from people who supposedly had slices of profit. But they are so cautious about revenue that they parody themselves, doing one show after another that are practically indistinguishable. They need the producers - and the writers will end up becoming their own producers, creating their own shows. Networks will be totally dependent on those who actually create programming, which reduces them to a distribution business model. This is bad news, indeed, when the Internet will increasingly make that approach obsolete. when will they first wake up? When people no longer so anxiously take meetings or do lunch?