I can remember sitting in front of my TV as a young child in the 60s, excited to have a choice of three different stations to watch -- CBS, ABC and NBC. My family sat together to enjoy the entertainment and news together. It was an important social gathering for us. Wow has the world changed.

No longer does my family sit together around a single TV in our living room watching the same show (in fact, there isn't even a TV in our living room). We all have shows that we like, and they are different. My wife's favorite show is The Sopranos on HBO. I watch ER on NBC, and my kids watch YouTube and the Open Student Television Network. And neither of these last two channels are on TV.

In short, watching TV is less about all of us getting together as a family and more about each of us having our individual needs for information and entertainment -- met directly by anyone and everyone who has content that is interesting to us. In short, the concept of 500 channels, a vision of the cable and TV industry, has given way to a new way of thinking about content -- 500 million channels. And these 500 million channels are brought to you by any body and everyone that has something to say -- like your local bloggers, podcasters, and amateur radio and TV producers who use the Internet, a digital camera and a computer -- not just the traditional broadcaster. And the same is true for writing books (self publishing using wikis), creating music (song writers with computers) and producing radio shows.

So for me -- I'm happy. I get to watch, listen to and read whatever I want to watch, listen to and read -- using whatever channel I want, whenever I want, using whatever device I want (including my favorite - my ipod). More importantly, I have a choice of more than 100 million different people and businesses that are growing daily that want to give it to me -- on the way to 500 million people and more. What a change from the old days. And how rewarding it is for us all. - Barry 5/21/06