It's the content, stoopid. Hey, it doesn't take a lot of talent to create content that zillions of viewers will stare at for an hour. It doesn't have to be good to be profitable. No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the masses. Voyeur TV is making the commercial TV networks a mint, but the whole concept is showing the way for lots of other less well-heeled producers with less than pristine ideas.
Kings can be evil, twisted, tyrannical despots, but they're still kings.
So, many times, the lower the quality of content, the more likely it is to be watched. Some shows will be so bad, they'll be good. There are billions to be made by appealing to the lowest common denominator, and believe me, on the Web, we're talking a level of low that makes commercial schlock TV look like Citizen Kane. As the 500 channels with nothing on expand to five million channels of TV-quality video streamed over the Web, the contentmeisters will be the new darlings of Wall Street, with the digital video editors molding, refining, and producing lots of it themselves. But the really big money will be in schlock.