I just watched a clip of Jeff Jarvis at the Syndicate media conference in New York. He was talking about Jon Stewart’s famous appearance on CNN’s Crossfire.
When the show aired, about 150,000 watched it. The video clip, as posted to the Internet, has been seen 10,000,000 times. I’m not sure CNN made anything from the Internet plays, even though their reach dwarfed the ‘main’ channel.
For broadcasters and cable channels, this is a significant disconnect. It’s not that programs aren’t being watched, as much as they aren’t being watched in a way that produces revenue necessary to make them.