Media Revolution? Did it hit the mark?

Last night the BBC showed the latest Janet Street-Porter doco, looking at the future for print media – specifically newspapers.

Now I will admit I only caught the last 15 minutes or so and would love to hear from anyone who saw the whole thing.

From what little I did see there seemed to be little acknowledgement that it’s not the internet or expectation that online media should be free but rather the reliance upon out dated advertising models that poses the biggest threat to the printed media industry.

Did it touch on this?

UPDATE:  Doc Searles has just posted a piece on the Project VRM blog about just this.  Importantly he proposes a system called PayChoice which would afford readers the ability to easily pay for content on their own terms not just the archaic one-sided options talked about and lauded by the traditional press.

Differential pricing for video calling – is this a disability issue?

A few days back a conversation on Jaiku in which a comment was made regarding the use by the deaf as a potential driver for video calling.

My thoughts on this are yet to be fully formed but it raised a couple of immediate questions;

1) Does 2-way video calling potential level the telecoms playing field for those with a hearing impairment in that now that can use the service to lip-read (assuming they can)?

2) Has anyone done any research into this?

3) Does the differential pricing for video calls, whereby the operator’s charge more for a video call than a voice call, represent discrimination against those unable to utilise the voice service?

Rather obviously for the deaf SMS, IM and microblogging services are a level playing field already.

Hmmm. This needs more thinking.