Tablet World Gets Real

As CES touts 2011 as the "year of the tablet," Google and Apple are poised to do battle in what becomes the content to drive those tablet sales. Apple delayed launching Newsstand recently. Google is moving to get into the on-line book business with their new book store, and in turn, subscriptions. Read more on their plans here and from the Wall Street Journal.

This is the holy grail for publishing, and threatens to do for journalism what digital music did to music publishers: destroy their profit margins in an all-consuming end-user driven furnace.

Think back to CDs. The music publishers were a consortium that maintained their infrastructure with the somewhat artificially high price of the medium upon which the content was delivered. First Napster made digital possible; iTunes made it popular and safe for the mainstream.

Paper is already fading fast for real-time news and sports, and while media companies aren't conspiring to keep the cost of pulp high (as was accused of the music and movie industries on CD/DVD stock) they do have a real risk.

So what if Apple's Newsstand becomes the delivery mechanism for your local/regional/national paper and the way you get your Sports Illustrated in the future?

Then just like Apple TV, the opportunity for athletic departments, universities and other rights holders to get into the news delivery game is a more level playing field.

The advantage the local paper and television station had over the university was the huge cost of the infrastructure of distribution.

If the distribution network is digital, the huge cost just became manpower. With a more stable revenue base (state appropriation, tuition and fees, television rights fees, multimedia rights holders), who suddenly can afford to have their own branded journalism?