Making Money Now
All of us who concerned about the future of the planet have misunderestimated the opposition from those who are not. We thought that the flooding of web sites, talk back radio, television chat shows, letters columns in newspapers, blogs, with tens of thousands of mindless repetitions of a few talking points, was the main tactic. It had been modelled, perhaps, on the dropping of aluminum foil plates (”Window”) by planes heading for Calais on 6 June 1944. The foil looked like massed planes and ships to German radar, making them believe, until too late, that the invasion force was heading in that direction, and not Normandy.
The mindless denialist chatter has had the same effect, masking the real science going on and preventing public, and politicians, understanding the very real threat of climate change. And this was bad enough – a very effective tactic which has prevented any serious action on greenhouse gases for ten long desperate years. A tactic which has let the big polluters slip under the radar, continue sucking trillions of dollars out of the Earth while carelessly pouring CO2 into the air.
But we thought that was it. That soon reality would appear like the D-Day invasion fleet suddenly appearing with the dawn off Normandy. That the combination of measurements and the now obvious effects of global warming on world climates was going to bring politicians kicking and screaming to the negotiating tables of Copenhagen. If that was the worst that the shadowy figures of the energy industry and other giant corporations could throw at us then we had, like Ali, roped a dope, and were about to bounce back with the knock-out blow.
Silly us. The invasion of Iraq and then the Health Care debate should have warned us that the Armies of the Right stop at nothing these days to impose their will and maintain their robber baron status, their dynasties. And so, like WMD and “Death Panels” now we have the “CRU email scandal”, discussed earlier by Kevin Grandia. Just two weeks from Copenhagen the British Climate Research Unit computers are hacked, their emails downloaded and sent off into Deniaworld. There, just as in the lead up to the Iraq War, words are cherry picked, context removed, common sense abandoned, outrage simulated, war declared, counter views demonised. Vials of imaginary anthrax are displayed, trucks become mobile laboratories, aluminum tubes become nuclear bombs, rockets are ready to launch at New York in ten minutes.
And suddenly, it seems, temperatures are no longer rising, the Arctic is no longer melting, glaciers don't retreat, droughts don't happen, record temperatures are no longer set, marine acidity doesn't increase, sea levels don't rise, plants don't flower at different times, birds don't breed at different times, firestorms no longer erupt.
It was, apparently, all just a dream.
But I'm a wake up on The Watermelon Blog.
Lord Mandelson last week finally – it seemed – announced the timetable for legislation that will get tough with illegal downloaders. It's time to take stock – among the creative industries, which is doing well, or badly, from the internet revolution?
Illicit downloading of digital data has become rife in the years since June 1999 when the original Napster introduced the world to music files. It is blamed for millions of pounds of lost revenues by the music, video and games industries. But some say that the solution is not to fight the internet, which has savaged music retailers and forced video games online, while newspapers have noticed people are ignoring paid-for newsprint in favour of free websites.
So does everyone have it bad? MediaGuardian surveys the scene.
UK recorded music
Size of industry in 2000: £2.047bn
Size in 2008: £1.31bn (source: BPI. Measurement changed in 2004)
Breakthrough internet moment: Napster created uproar. Even though most people were still on dial-up connections, the ability to find any song you wanted and get it for free – from some anonymous person's hard drive – created an expectation for a generation just getting used to “online”. Though the record companies managed to close Napster, the toothpaste was out of the tube: filesharing networks grew like hydras.
The second – balancing – moment was the launch of Apple's iTunes Music Store in 2003: a legal, paid-for source of music, track by track. By 2008, it was the biggest music vendor in the US.; though record companies were privately fuming because they felt Apple now had too much power. They managed to institute “variable pricing” so that new songs cost more than old ones; and they removed the digital locks Digital Rights Management (DRM) that prevented iTunes songs playing on anything but iPods. Even so, Apple holds the whip hand in the digital download field.
Biggest casualty: Retailers such as Tower Records, Zavvi, Woolworths.
Buzz company: Spotify, the streaming music company that has more than five million users in Europe. Although it is far from profitable, principally because of the cost of licensing the music, the fact the record companies own 18% of its shares and that its users are less likely to pirate music, means it has industry support.
And none of this, of course, includes live music, which has seen a renaissance in the past few years.
In vogue prophet: Barney Wragg, former head of eLabs at Universal Music and of EMI's digital division. He pushed record labels to go to MP3 in 2007; made the track Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (performed at Live 8 in 2005) the fastest performance-to-digital download song ever (45 minutes from singing to link). Also: Mark Mulligan, music analyst, Forrester; and Gerd Leonard, “media futurist”, who warns book publishers not to try to do what the music industry did by controlling distribution through DRM.
Mandy – friend or foe? Huge, huge, come-aboard-my-yacht friend. The music industry's lobbying has been exceptionally effective with government, though it's had little effect on the public, which still (allegedly) likes an illicit download or million.
MediaGuardian verdict: The recorded music industry has a promising future in ringtones, downloads, and streaming sites – if it can take a smaller cut per song and accept the financial glories of the past are gone.
Film (DVD/video excluding cinema)
Size in 2000: DVDs: £264m; VHS: £840m; rental: £186m; digital: 0 (total£1.1bn)
Size in 2008: DVDs: £2.0bn; VHS: 0; rental: £219m; digital: £80m (total: £2.3bn) Source: British Video Association
Breakthrough internet moment: The launch of the Bittorrent protocol by the programmer Bram Cohen in 2001. It breaks large files into little pieces that can be distributed among many computers on a network, and downloaded from each of them. Each downloader is also an uploader to anyone who wants a piece; though nobody uploads the whole file, except the first person to put it on the network. Add DVD-ripping software, plus broadband, plus the arrival of The Pirate Bay, a Swedish site that hosted torrent “trackers” – little files that told home computers which other machines had the pieces of a particular file, and you had the film industry's “Napster moment”. It hates The Pirate Bay.
Biggest casualty: Distributors' pride (Oscar DVDs have leaked onto The Pirate Bay); Woolworths etc; music industry (which has lost out in the fight for peoples' spending).
Current buzz company: Netflix (US), which has launched online streaming (US-only) and held a competition with a $1m prize to get people to write a better matching system to recommend films and drew a huge response.
In vogue prophet: John Lasseter, the storytelling genius at Pixar who has made animation not just fun but essential, and has now pushed 3D – which is rather hard to pirate – into the mainstream through the Disney-owned company.
Mandy FoF? Very much a friend, in the queue just behind the music industry
MediaGuardian verdict: The sheer size of films and relative complexity of Bittorrent has kept it comparatively safe from widespread piracy. But as connections get faster, film companies can't rely on selling physical disks; Apple already offers near real-time streaming of films, though its Apple TV box hasn't been a success. The saving grace in the UK is the penetration of Sky and Virgin, which offer pay-per-view for films.
Newspapers
Size in 2000: Nationals £4,251m; regionals £3,467m
Size in 2009: Nationals £4,343m; regionals £3,128m (inc online recruitment revenues since 2003.) Source: Advertising Statistics Yearbook
Breakthrough internet moment: The Daily Telegraph setting up the first UK online paper (February 1994); website news coverage of the July 2005 London bombings; internet advertising in the UK exceeding newspaper advertising (2006).
Biggest casualty: Dozens of regional and local newspapers. Newspaper staff, both editorial and commercial.
Buzz company: Amazon, because of its Kindle e-reader; Apple, whose iPhone/iPod Touch handheld computer offers the chance to create free or paid-for “apps” (see: Sky News, the Spectator and, it is rumoured, the Guardian) to get more people reading electronically.
In vogue prophet: Jeff Jarvis, Guardian columnist; Clay Shirky; Steven B Johnson.
Mandy FoF? Would-be friend, but unrequited: calls for more funding for struggling regional and local papers have been cold-shouldered by a government that is happy to prop up the car industry with its car scrappage scheme.
MediaGuardian verdict: Print isn't dead, but it has a nasty cough, and online presence – despite being enormous (the Guardian, Telegraph and Mail passed 30 million readers online in September) – doesn't yet generate as much money as print.
Video games (inc hardware)
Size in 2000: £1.22bn (inc hardware)
Size in 2008: £4.03bn (source: GFK Chart Track)
Breakthrough internet moment: The launch of World of Warcraft on 23 November 2004: it now has more than 11.5 million subscribers paying a monthly fee, and has created an enormous spin-off economy of “gold farmers” in countries such as China who simply play the game to create goods to sell to people in developed countries.
Biggest casualty: The music industry. Kids who used to buy singles and CDs buy Call of Duty 4 and Fifa 10 instead.
Buzz company: Surprisingly, Microsoft, whose Project Natal may apply the Wii's realistic play to your entire body.
In vogue prophet: British games designer and Bafta-winner Peter Molyneux says Natal is “a big, big deal”.
Mandy FoF?: Despite complaints and a vigorous industry lobbying campaign for tax breaks for games publishers and recruiters, Mandelson doesn't seem to know that video games do better business than music in the UK.
MediaGuardian verdict: Games are thriving, though still not accepted as “mainstream” – even though you can judge a music CD on a few hearings or a film on one viewing, while a decent game will require up to 40 hours' play just to become competent. Versatility means they can adapt – and they lead in technological advances.
Television
Size in 2000: £7.7bn advertising revenue (not inflation-adjusted); pay TV subscriptions: £2.2bn
Size in 2008: £11.2bn; pay TV: £4.3bn (source: Ofcom)
Breakthrough internet moment: There have been multiple failed attempts at “internet TV”, including those from Microsoft and Joost. The breakthrough was the “Bus Uncle” video on YouTube in May 2006. It's not TV, but it exploded. It is a short-form video on the internet. From that moment, YouTube has become like TV to a whole generation. The traditional box in the corner has struggled to keep the attention of people often gazing at another box, possibly on their laps.
TV made a comeback with the launch of the BBC iPlayer in June 2008: it brought full-length TV programmes to people's browsers without needing extra software. The effect on viewing has been electric: in May it was believed to be streaming seven petabytes (thousands of gigabytes) every single month, 100 gigabits a second.
Biggest casualty: ITV. Advertisers' flight to the internet, its inability to produce a working iPlayer clone, and ill-advised purchase of the social networking site Friends Reunited left it looking bumbling.
Buzz company: The BBC, which had planned to share the technology – a plan blocked by the BBC Trust.
In vogue prophet: Anthony Rose, the man behind the iPlayer. Formerly at KaZaA – a music/video file-sharing company – he's shown you have to understand the internet to alter it.
Mandy FoF?: The BBC isn't flavour of the month with Labour or the Tories; ITV has been treated with indifference. Mandy has no time for either.
MediaGuardian verdict: ITV's next chair and chief executive have their work cut out protecting the channel from being torn apart by the rise of internet-based viewing. The BBC is safe enough, because its public service remit means the iPlayer is defensible as an alternative to broadcast.
If you're a freelance writer, or thinking about becoming one, then you know that writing is the easy part. Finding places to pitch your writing, eg, marketing it, takes up the bulk of your time.
Well, there are a few ways on the Internet where you can start making money right away – as in, within one week. Following are three.
1. Write for Pay Sites (3 Reviewed)
A. AssociatedContent.com: My favorite write-for-pay site. The beauty of writing for this site is that you write what you want and get paid for it – anywhere from $3 to $40 for a minimum 400-word article. They also accept videos for payment.
The reason I like this site is: 1) as mentioned above, you write what you want. No editor guidelines to follow, writing about subjects that you have no interest in and/or tons of research to do. 2) No minimum pay out to reach (many sites have a minimum you have to reach before you get paid); and 3) Fairly quick turnaround time They usually take 5-7 business days to read your submission and make you an offer.
If you have a hobby, a subject you are passionate about, or a subject you want to take the time to write about – for whatever reason – simply set up an Author's account with them (it's FREE!) and submit.
NOTE: On rare occasions, your article will be rejected. However, the editors usually leave a note explaining why and you then have the chance to make changes and resubmit the content. As I said, to be rejected is rare, but on the few occasions I have been, I always rewrote and usually got a higher than normal offer by acting on the editor's suggestions.
Since I've been a freelance writer for over a decade and had a large library of content, I made a couple of hundred dollars in a few week's time by submitting previously published material.
Didn't I mention that the material you submit doesn't have to be original? You will be paid less for it, but as it's already written and has probably been used for other purposes, it's like free cash. They pay more for original material and material that they specifically request (new topics are emailed from the administrator each Friday).
B. WriteForCash.com: With WriteForCash.com, it takes them up to two weeks to review your article, and more often than not, you will have to make some revisions before your article will be accepted.
Also, it takes them up to three months to get your article on the web. Another drawback of this site is that they own the copyright to the work (eg, you can't resell the content) and you have to choose from topics they list on which to write.
To their credit, the list of topics can be wide-ranging and they pay from $10 to $15 per article. But, if you have a hankering to write about, for example, the World Cup, and it's not on their list, you won't get paid for it.
C. Constant-Content.com: With this site, you basically put your articles up for bid, setting your own price. However, a lot of writers there offer their articles for free, which diminishes your chance of selling one – especially if it's in the same genre. Further, you have to keep your price pretty low to sell articles – anywhere from $1 to $5. Although, this can increase if you write for high-paying genres, eg, finance, technical, etc.
On the upside, you can resell content here. So, if you are going to write an article anyway and sell it elsewhere, you might as well post it here. However, another drawback is that you won't be paid until your account hits the $50 mark. Realistically, this can take months, especially if you are only posting one or two articles a week and selling them for $2 or $3 each.
There are tons of ways to sell your writing online; these three sites are just to get you going and/or supplement what you may already be doing.
2. Start an Article Directory: This takes a bit more work, but is very simple to start. What do people look for on the Internet – information – lots of it!
To start an article directory, all you have to do is put up a simple website and start soliciting writers to submit their articles to you – free of charge. Most article writers are promoters of something – e-books, seminars, software, workshops, etc. They are constantly looking for free and/or low-cost exposure.
Soon, you can have hundreds of pages of content. How will you make money? Add Google ads (details below). Every time someone clicks on one of the ads, you make money.
Many article directories take articles on many subjects; some specialize. Only you can decide which is right for you. I personally prefer niche directories because as the web expands, I think users will revisit a directory that carries quality information on a specific topic more often than one that carries a lot of articles on everything. Even if you separate them out by category, I find the “all inclusive directories” too overwhelming. Again, it's up to you.
The real key to making money with an article directory is promoting it and getting good, quality articles for your site. To get excellent articles, surf the web using key words on your subject. Once you find an article you like, contact the author (most will have their contact info in the resource box at the end of the article) and ask them to regularly submit articles to your directory. They will almost always say yes.
Once your directory has been indexed by search engines, many will start sending you articles automatically. This is when your site should really take off. Once you have a few hundred articles in your directory (and this can literally take as little as a few weeks if you put in the time), slap those Google ads on each page, and voila – you have hundreds of pages of content carrying ads that, each time they're clicked, is money in your pocket.
NOTE: There are many article directories online where you can automatically pull articles from to get started. Do a Google search for “article directory” and about 3.5 million (yes, million!) results pop up.
Article Directory Software: If you want to put out a little money, you can purchase software that will completely automate this process for you. Do a Google search for “article directory software” and close to half a million results come up. With most of the software you can choose to buy and install yourself, or have the publisher install it for you. Note: You have to be a real techie if you choose to go the self-install route.
Before starting an article directory, I recommend taking several hours and doing some reading on the subject. While it's a relatively simple concept, it can be a lot of work up front – but can pay huge dividends over the months and years to come.
To learn more about getting those Google ads you see on many websites, go to Google.com. Click on “Advertising Programs” (a plain text button right under the search box). Then click on “For Web Publishers: Google AdSense”. Finally, click on “What is AdSense? Quick Tour”. The program will be explained in detail and you can have it up and running in about 5 minutes.
3. Start a Blog: This is becoming old hat, but is still new and fresh enough that if you have a passion for something and can target a highly defined niche, you can start a blog on it, add some Google Adsense ads, and turn it into a few hundred bucks a month without too much effort. Want to make more? Like anything in life, the more time you commit to it, the more your income will rise.
There's even a new website, Scoopt.com, that acts as a blog literary agent. What do I mean by this? Specifically, they “help you license your blog for both commercial and non-commercial use.” In essence, they help you sell your blog's content. See full details at their site.
Blogs are no longer just for ranting about your last bad relationship or the bad dye job your colorist did on your hair. They are professional outlets for making money now.
To read a case study of how a personal interest can be turned into a popular, moneymaking blog, go to ProBlogger.net and do a search of their site for “”Back in Skinny Jeans”. The article should pop up. It's very, very interesting reading.
FYI, to start a blog, go to blogger.com, create an account and start blogging away. It's FREE!
SUMMARY: These are not get-rich-quick schemes. My mission at InkwellEditorial.com is to help creative and editorial freelancers earn a decent living. I will never promise you that you will “make thousands a month by just doing x”, as many will. Don't believe the hype.
I have been in publishing since 1987, and have been a freelancer since 1993. Believe me, I've heard about and tried so many different programs. The only way to make money is to consistently plug away at something. It takes time and effort, effort and time. The good news is that if you are determined to make a living as a creative professional, the Internet makes it easier than ever. And, it can be done “relatively” easy if you choose effective methods and consistently implement them.
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All of us who concerned about the future of the planet have misunderestimated the opposition from those who are not. We thought that the flooding of web sites, talk back radio, television chat shows, letters columns in newspapers, blogs, with tens of thousands of mindless repetitions of a few talking points, was the main tactic. It had been modelled, perhaps, on the dropping of aluminum foil plates (”Window”) by planes heading for Calais on 6 June 1944. The foil looked like massed planes and ships to German radar, making them believe, until too late, that the invasion force was heading in that direction, and not Normandy.
The mindless denialist chatter has had the same effect, masking the real science going on and preventing public, and politicians, understanding the very real threat of climate change. And this was bad enough – a very effective tactic which has prevented any serious action on greenhouse gases for ten long desperate years. A tactic which has let the big polluters slip under the radar, continue sucking trillions of dollars out of the Earth while carelessly pouring CO2 into the air.
But we thought that was it. That soon reality would appear like the D-Day invasion fleet suddenly appearing with the dawn off Normandy. That the combination of measurements and the now obvious effects of global warming on world climates was going to bring politicians kicking and screaming to the negotiating tables of Copenhagen. If that was the worst that the shadowy figures of the energy industry and other giant corporations could throw at us then we had, like Ali, roped a dope, and were about to bounce back with the knock-out blow.
Silly us. The invasion of Iraq and then the Health Care debate should have warned us that the Armies of the Right stop at nothing these days to impose their will and maintain their robber baron status, their dynasties. And so, like WMD and “Death Panels” now we have the “CRU email scandal”, discussed earlier by Kevin Grandia. Just two weeks from Copenhagen the British Climate Research Unit computers are hacked, their emails downloaded and sent off into Deniaworld. There, just as in the lead up to the Iraq War, words are cherry picked, context removed, common sense abandoned, outrage simulated, war declared, counter views demonised. Vials of imaginary anthrax are displayed, trucks become mobile laboratories, aluminum tubes become nuclear bombs, rockets are ready to launch at New York in ten minutes.
And suddenly, it seems, temperatures are no longer rising, the Arctic is no longer melting, glaciers don't retreat, droughts don't happen, record temperatures are no longer set, marine acidity doesn't increase, sea levels don't rise, plants don't flower at different times, birds don't breed at different times, firestorms no longer erupt.
It was, apparently, all just a dream.
But I'm a wake up on The Watermelon Blog.
Lord Mandelson last week finally – it seemed – announced the timetable for legislation that will get tough with illegal downloaders. It's time to take stock – among the creative industries, which is doing well, or badly, from the internet revolution?
Illicit downloading of digital data has become rife in the years since June 1999 when the original Napster introduced the world to music files. It is blamed for millions of pounds of lost revenues by the music, video and games industries. But some say that the solution is not to fight the internet, which has savaged music retailers and forced video games online, while newspapers have noticed people are ignoring paid-for newsprint in favour of free websites.
So does everyone have it bad? MediaGuardian surveys the scene.
UK recorded music
Size of industry in 2000: £2.047bn
Size in 2008: £1.31bn (source: BPI. Measurement changed in 2004)
Breakthrough internet moment: Napster created uproar. Even though most people were still on dial-up connections, the ability to find any song you wanted and get it for free – from some anonymous person's hard drive – created an expectation for a generation just getting used to “online”. Though the record companies managed to close Napster, the toothpaste was out of the tube: filesharing networks grew like hydras.
The second – balancing – moment was the launch of Apple's iTunes Music Store in 2003: a legal, paid-for source of music, track by track. By 2008, it was the biggest music vendor in the US.; though record companies were privately fuming because they felt Apple now had too much power. They managed to institute “variable pricing” so that new songs cost more than old ones; and they removed the digital locks Digital Rights Management (DRM) that prevented iTunes songs playing on anything but iPods. Even so, Apple holds the whip hand in the digital download field.
Biggest casualty: Retailers such as Tower Records, Zavvi, Woolworths.
Buzz company: Spotify, the streaming music company that has more than five million users in Europe. Although it is far from profitable, principally because of the cost of licensing the music, the fact the record companies own 18% of its shares and that its users are less likely to pirate music, means it has industry support.
And none of this, of course, includes live music, which has seen a renaissance in the past few years.
In vogue prophet: Barney Wragg, former head of eLabs at Universal Music and of EMI's digital division. He pushed record labels to go to MP3 in 2007; made the track Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (performed at Live 8 in 2005) the fastest performance-to-digital download song ever (45 minutes from singing to link). Also: Mark Mulligan, music analyst, Forrester; and Gerd Leonard, “media futurist”, who warns book publishers not to try to do what the music industry did by controlling distribution through DRM.
Mandy – friend or foe? Huge, huge, come-aboard-my-yacht friend. The music industry's lobbying has been exceptionally effective with government, though it's had little effect on the public, which still (allegedly) likes an illicit download or million.
MediaGuardian verdict: The recorded music industry has a promising future in ringtones, downloads, and streaming sites – if it can take a smaller cut per song and accept the financial glories of the past are gone.
Film (DVD/video excluding cinema)
Size in 2000: DVDs: £264m; VHS: £840m; rental: £186m; digital: 0 (total£1.1bn)
Size in 2008: DVDs: £2.0bn; VHS: 0; rental: £219m; digital: £80m (total: £2.3bn) Source: British Video Association
Breakthrough internet moment: The launch of the Bittorrent protocol by the programmer Bram Cohen in 2001. It breaks large files into little pieces that can be distributed among many computers on a network, and downloaded from each of them. Each downloader is also an uploader to anyone who wants a piece; though nobody uploads the whole file, except the first person to put it on the network. Add DVD-ripping software, plus broadband, plus the arrival of The Pirate Bay, a Swedish site that hosted torrent “trackers” – little files that told home computers which other machines had the pieces of a particular file, and you had the film industry's “Napster moment”. It hates The Pirate Bay.
Biggest casualty: Distributors' pride (Oscar DVDs have leaked onto The Pirate Bay); Woolworths etc; music industry (which has lost out in the fight for peoples' spending).
Current buzz company: Netflix (US), which has launched online streaming (US-only) and held a competition with a $1m prize to get people to write a better matching system to recommend films and drew a huge response.
In vogue prophet: John Lasseter, the storytelling genius at Pixar who has made animation not just fun but essential, and has now pushed 3D – which is rather hard to pirate – into the mainstream through the Disney-owned company.
Mandy FoF? Very much a friend, in the queue just behind the music industry
MediaGuardian verdict: The sheer size of films and relative complexity of Bittorrent has kept it comparatively safe from widespread piracy. But as connections get faster, film companies can't rely on selling physical disks; Apple already offers near real-time streaming of films, though its Apple TV box hasn't been a success. The saving grace in the UK is the penetration of Sky and Virgin, which offer pay-per-view for films.
Newspapers
Size in 2000: Nationals £4,251m; regionals £3,467m
Size in 2009: Nationals £4,343m; regionals £3,128m (inc online recruitment revenues since 2003.) Source: Advertising Statistics Yearbook
Breakthrough internet moment: The Daily Telegraph setting up the first UK online paper (February 1994); website news coverage of the July 2005 London bombings; internet advertising in the UK exceeding newspaper advertising (2006).
Biggest casualty: Dozens of regional and local newspapers. Newspaper staff, both editorial and commercial.
Buzz company: Amazon, because of its Kindle e-reader; Apple, whose iPhone/iPod Touch handheld computer offers the chance to create free or paid-for “apps” (see: Sky News, the Spectator and, it is rumoured, the Guardian) to get more people reading electronically.
In vogue prophet: Jeff Jarvis, Guardian columnist; Clay Shirky; Steven B Johnson.
Mandy FoF? Would-be friend, but unrequited: calls for more funding for struggling regional and local papers have been cold-shouldered by a government that is happy to prop up the car industry with its car scrappage scheme.
MediaGuardian verdict: Print isn't dead, but it has a nasty cough, and online presence – despite being enormous (the Guardian, Telegraph and Mail passed 30 million readers online in September) – doesn't yet generate as much money as print.
Video games (inc hardware)
Size in 2000: £1.22bn (inc hardware)
Size in 2008: £4.03bn (source: GFK Chart Track)
Breakthrough internet moment: The launch of World of Warcraft on 23 November 2004: it now has more than 11.5 million subscribers paying a monthly fee, and has created an enormous spin-off economy of “gold farmers” in countries such as China who simply play the game to create goods to sell to people in developed countries.
Biggest casualty: The music industry. Kids who used to buy singles and CDs buy Call of Duty 4 and Fifa 10 instead.
Buzz company: Surprisingly, Microsoft, whose Project Natal may apply the Wii's realistic play to your entire body.
In vogue prophet: British games designer and Bafta-winner Peter Molyneux says Natal is “a big, big deal”.
Mandy FoF?: Despite complaints and a vigorous industry lobbying campaign for tax breaks for games publishers and recruiters, Mandelson doesn't seem to know that video games do better business than music in the UK.
MediaGuardian verdict: Games are thriving, though still not accepted as “mainstream” – even though you can judge a music CD on a few hearings or a film on one viewing, while a decent game will require up to 40 hours' play just to become competent. Versatility means they can adapt – and they lead in technological advances.
Television
Size in 2000: £7.7bn advertising revenue (not inflation-adjusted); pay TV subscriptions: £2.2bn
Size in 2008: £11.2bn; pay TV: £4.3bn (source: Ofcom)
Breakthrough internet moment: There have been multiple failed attempts at “internet TV”, including those from Microsoft and Joost. The breakthrough was the “Bus Uncle” video on YouTube in May 2006. It's not TV, but it exploded. It is a short-form video on the internet. From that moment, YouTube has become like TV to a whole generation. The traditional box in the corner has struggled to keep the attention of people often gazing at another box, possibly on their laps.
TV made a comeback with the launch of the BBC iPlayer in June 2008: it brought full-length TV programmes to people's browsers without needing extra software. The effect on viewing has been electric: in May it was believed to be streaming seven petabytes (thousands of gigabytes) every single month, 100 gigabits a second.
Biggest casualty: ITV. Advertisers' flight to the internet, its inability to produce a working iPlayer clone, and ill-advised purchase of the social networking site Friends Reunited left it looking bumbling.
Buzz company: The BBC, which had planned to share the technology – a plan blocked by the BBC Trust.
In vogue prophet: Anthony Rose, the man behind the iPlayer. Formerly at KaZaA – a music/video file-sharing company – he's shown you have to understand the internet to alter it.
Mandy FoF?: The BBC isn't flavour of the month with Labour or the Tories; ITV has been treated with indifference. Mandy has no time for either.
MediaGuardian verdict: ITV's next chair and chief executive have their work cut out protecting the channel from being torn apart by the rise of internet-based viewing. The BBC is safe enough, because its public service remit means the iPlayer is defensible as an alternative to broadcast.
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