The End of the Middlemen (i.e., Newspapers and TV Networks)

(MoneyWatch)  Disintermediation. There's a term you probably haven't heard much since the '90s. But the idea of eliminating the middleman is alive and well in the media industry, circa 2008, even if we don't talk about it in exactly those terms these days.

While traditional journalism debates -- and mostly bemoans -- the merits of "citizen journalism," the companies that employ traditional journalists are evaporating right before our eyes.

We've documented many times here the loss in circulation and advertising revenue that is undermining newspapers, and increasingly, magazines as well. We've also noted the decline of the old television networks; and although we've not delved into commercial radio much, you can toss that sector on the junk heap of history as well. Analyst and blogger Alan Mutter, who calls himself a Newsosaur, calculates that 11 publicly traded newspaper companies have lost approximately $50 billion in market value over the past three and a half years, or more than half of their cumulative market capitalization since the end of 2004.

As the newspaper companies are being removed from the supply chain for news and information, so are the old-line TV networks. Although the median age of the U.S. population as a whole has remained steady the past few years, the median age of ABC viewers has gone from 44 to 48 in the past four years; NBC's has gone from 46 to 49; and CBS, which already had the oldest crowd, has seen its median viewer age from 52 to 53.

Fox has not fared any better (35 to 42).

It's not that people are not watching TV and other video programming, but they're increasingly doing it on cellphones and other mobile units like BlackBerries, iPhones, etc.). Over 150 million such units will be sold in 2009. Thanks to TiVo and similar technologies, consumers no longer need remain captive to the networks and their advertisers.

Disintermediation. It's time to bring back the term.