04/24/2007 01:52 PMLoading “Advertising Age”Page 1 of 11http://adage.com/print?article_id=45561What happens if the traditionalmarketing model collapsesbefore a better alternative isestablished? Bob Garfield daresto confront the question. Bob Garfield's 'Chaos Scenario'A Look at the Marketing Industry's Coming DisasterBy Bob Garfield Published: April 13, 2005Meet George Jetson, circa 2020.He doesn't have a personal hovercraft or a food computer, but the rest of the future is more futuristic thanhe thought. Spacely Sprockets and Cogswell Cogs are out of business. Digits are the new widgets.TV is goneOver-the-air network TV is gone, along with program schedules, affiliatestations and hotel demand in Cannes in the third week of June. George, Jane,Judy and Elroy get their entertainment, and their news, any way they wish:TV, phone, camera, laptop, game console, MP3 player. They get to choosefrom what the Hollywood big boys have funded and distributed, or what thegreater vlogosphere has percolated to their attention.ABC, NBC and CBS are still major brands, but they surely aren't generatingradio waves. Three initials never uttered, however, are CPM. They've longsince been supplanted not just by ROI, but VOD, video on demand; P2P, thepeer-to-peer Napsterization of content; DRM, the allocation of royalties fordigital distribution of content; VOIP, Internet telephony; and RSS, thesoftware that aggregates Web content for easy access by the user.Branded Entertainment has long since been exposed as a false idol, becauseconsumers got quickly fed up with their shows being contaminated by productplacements. Satellite radio is a $4 billion 8-track tape player, stored on a highshelf in the garage, pushed aside by podcasting, which is free. The UpfrontMarket is an exhibit at the Smithsonian. The Super Bowl survived as the No.04/24/2007 01:52 PMLoading “Advertising Age”Page 2 of 11http://adage.com/print?article_id=45561Others Articles in This Series:YouTube Grows Up -- ButWhat Does It Mean?Bob Garfield Explores TheImplications of the VideoSharing RevolutionInside the New World ofListenomicsHow the Open SourceRevolution Impacts Your Brands1 pay-per-view event. Survivor didn't.The space-age family of the future can still watch CSI, any episode theywant, whenever they want, but not on any advertiser's dime -- unless theychoose for their viewing costs to be subsidized. Yet advertisers knoweverything about them and understand virtually every move they make.Marketers aren't adversariesAnd the Jetsons don't fight it. In 2020, consumers understand that marketersaren't adversaries; they're intimates, sharing info for everybody's mutualbenefit.Yesiree, by George, it's a brave and exciting new world that the near future holds, a democratized,consumer-empowered, bottom-up, pull-not-push, lean forward and lean back universe that will improve thequantity and quality of entertainment options, create hitherto unimaginable marketing opportunities andefficiencies and, not incidentally, generate wealth that will make the current $250 billion domestic ad marketseem like pin money.Alas, the future -- near or not -- doesn't happen till later.So let's return to contemporary business reality in the digital revolution, already in progress. Because in theintervening 15 years -- or 20 years, or five -- there are three more initials to consider: SOS.Because revolutions by their nature are neither seamless nor smooth.Collapse of old modelBecause there is no reason to believe the collapse of the old media model will yield a plug-and-play newone.On the contrary, there is nothing especially orderly about media's New World Order. At the moment it is acollection of technologies and ideas and vacant-lot bandwidth, a digital playground for visionaries andnerds.So what happens when 30 Rock and Black Rock and the other towering edifices of network TV are rubble,and the vacant lot has yet to be developed?Undeveloped and unprepared. Unprepared to lawfully deliver CSI. Unprepared to absorb $4 billion addollars, much less broadcast's $42 billion. Unprepared legally, technologically and even socially to pick upthe pieces of the old world order.Hold on. Let's change metaphors. Forget the construction site. Make it a space-age treadmill, cycling toofast for George Jetson to keep his footing. "Jane!" he pleads. "Stop this crazy thing!" But Jane can't stop it.Nobody can stop it, and nobody can quite hang on.Ah, yes. The Chaos Scenario.Downward spiralThe statistics are already getting tiresome, but let's review a few of the more salient ones, shall we?04/24/2007 01:52 PMLoading “Advertising Age”Page 3 of 11http://adage.com/print?article_id=45561According to Nielsen, network TV audience has eroded an average of 2% a year for a decade, although inthe same period the U.S. population increased by 30 million.In the last sweeps period, for the first time, cable commanded a larger audience than broadcast.The cost of reaching 1,000 households in prime time has jumped from $7.64 in 1994 to $19.85 in 2004.A 2000 Veronis Suhler Stevenson survey showed that Americans devoted an average of 866 hours tobroadcast TV annually and 107 to the Internet, a ratio of 8:1. The projection for 2005 had the TV/Internetratio at 785 hours to 200, or just under 4:1.U.S. household broadband penetration has gone from 8% in March 2000 to an estimated 56% in March ofthis year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.70% of DVR users skip commercialsFive percent of U.S. homes are equipped with TiVo or other digital video recorders, and not only does time-shifting of favorite programs render network schedules irrelevant, 70% of DVR users skip past TVcommercials.Complicating problems, consolidation in the telecom industry and potential re-regulation of DTC drugadvertising threaten billions in network ad revenue, jeopardizing the supply-demand quotient that haspropped up network prices for five years. Meanwhile, there is the sword of Damocles called "cost." Thereality-TV fad has enabled networks to fill their ever-more-irrelevant schedules and cast for hits with cheapprogramming. But how much longer will they last? Westerns and spy shows, superheroes and hospitaldramas all once burned bright. Then they burned out.What's ominous about that is not the inevitable end of the latest hot genre; it's the inevitable end of theprofitability that has gone with it. And the downward spiral could begin at any moment. In fact, to switchmetaphors once again, Shawn Burns, managing director