According to Yahoo’s VP of Video and Media Applications, the revolution has already happened. Ian Rodgers reckons the only option left for the music and video business is in ‘leveraging the scale of the web’.

It’s a fascinating argument. In particular, he recounts a conversation with a group of kids at a technology forum, at which he asked how many had seen the Saturday Night Live Lazy Sunday video on YouTube (a version of which is embedded above), and how many on TV (after being screened on SNL, the clip appeared on YouTube – NBC, the network behind it, asked YT to remove it). Almost every one of them had seen it on YouTube, but not one of them on television.

Says Rodgers:

Our kids are going to watch exactly what they want to watch, not necessarily what’s marketed to them. I understand this is threatening to large media businesses which are accustomed to owning the means of distribution, but I am certain it’s very good for our kids and for culture writ large. We’re all in the same business now, the business of making things people really love.

It’s not often I read an argument that so well summarises the trend that few of us have yet to articulate well. My son’s a case in point: mainstream media occupies very little space in his head. His taste in music in beyond eclectic: it’s artists that only he and a few friends have heard of. Much of his time in spent on Facebook, an Generation R closed world of exchanged links between a tightly bonded group of friends. They can cut the world any way they wish, and it’s almost impossible to force your way in.

So media producers have no choice: if I’m reading his argument correctly, the issue becomes one of smelling the coffee. Concentrate on producing brilliant things, and let them go free… you’ll find value in a chain that’s far larger than you had ever imagined. And anyway, you have no choice: they don’t have to listen anymore.

Then, my XBox 360 became something else. Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it was partnering with BT (of all people) to turn every 360 into a full-on cable box. As one of my colleagues over at Stuff.tv explains:

The announcement means that BT Broadband customers can get on-demand TV programmes and movies streamed (for a fee) to their TV without the need for a set-top box. They can also watch any of BT’s 242 ‘near-live’ Premiership football matches using the Xbox 360.

This is seriously joyous. Call Of Duty 4 and West Ham all from one box… does life get any better?

For instance, the tool comes three weeks after National Legal and Policy Center Chairman Ken Boehm blasted Google for allowing some 300 instances of pirated content on Google Video.The NLPC researched Google Video from Sept. 10 to Sept. 18 and found 300 cases of apparently copyrighted films, which logged more than 22 million views in the past year.

Google Watch – YouTube – Google Launches Anti-piracy Tool for YouTube

The podcast section will be silenced Oct. 31, according to a notice posted on Yahoo’s Web site. It joins several other features that Yahoo has scrapped as it tries to snap out of a financial funk that has depressed its stock price and triggered a reshuffling of top management.

Newsvine – Yahoo to Silence Podcast Service

Rocketboom joins a growing crowd of other top videoblogs that can be found on Blip.tv, including Wallstrip, TreeHugger TV, Alive in Baghdad, and Goodnight Burbank. As with most of those shows, the relationship between Rocketboom and blip.tv is not exclusive.

Rocketboom Moves to Blip.tvI’m hearing that. When we launched the Stuff.tv Show, it was an experiment – include it in the new site, and see if it floats. Nine months later, and it’s in the iTunes Top 20, and has just gone live as a channel on Joost.

Using today’s encoding techniques, an hour of video content equates to around 850 megabytes of data. According to the Cisco report, by 2011, Internet video will consume more than 17 exabytes of data a month (an exabyte is 10 to the 18th power). Divided by 850 megabytes, that 17 exabytes works out to some 20 trillion hours of video delivered over the Internet each month. Given that volume of video, it seems likely that some piece of content –- as an episode of Heroes or Desperate Housewives, perhaps — will garner a million simultaneous viewers and add a Nielsen ratings point to the viewing audience. In fact, it seems contradictory to think otherwise, 20 trillion is 20 million million hours per month — surely one popular piece of video content will generate this audience.

Can Internet Video Deliver A Nielsen Ratings Point? « NewTeeVeeMakes sense: creators and funders get a metric they can work with, building a foundation for popularity and sales. The only issue beyond there is measuring quality of audience (so making a big difference to advertising revenues): is there an argument here for YouTube working a lot harder at profiling and promoting its channels?

“YouTube … are clearly able (to) filter porn and pedophile material but appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success,” a statement released on his behalf said. [From Prince to sue YouTube, eBay over music use - Yahoo! News]

MICROSOFT is courting the BBC as it plans to launch its digital television and video service in Europe. The software giant is intent on turning its Xbox 360 video-games machine into a digital entertainment hub offering films, TV shows and high-definition programmes. It already offers video content in America via its Xbox 360 video-games console.

Bink.nu | BBC courted for Xbox link