Godin on channel proliferation

The always engaging and thought provoking Seth Godin is asking questions again. And when Seth asks a question, it would be worthwhile to think about it. Author, marketing maven, entrepreneur and change agent Seth is a keen observer of the environment and has a well-deserved reputation for not just trend spotting but then acting upon those trends. He has published 6 books that were best sellers including Permission Marketing (the thought leader on building customer relationships), published a free e-book called Ideavirus which topped 1 million downloads and founded Yoyodyne - one of the pioneers of direct interactive marketing. This is a recent entry on his eponymous blog: Disappearing channel scarcity. It is typical of his communications - simply stated observations and a question or two that links and leads to some very important insights.

The people in the TV business can't imagine this. They can't imagine a world where there might be 20 A&E networks, or where there might be a channel just for shows on how to build a model airplane.

XM radio and the Net just increased the number of radio stations by a factor of 100.

And today the NY Times reports that 175,000 books are published every year. And rising.

And we just hit 3,000,000 blogs, up from 100 five years ago.