People are lazy.

Okay, I'm lazy.

One of the things that built the TV business, early on, was the reluctance of the viewer to get up off the couch and change the channel.  So the network that got you with the 7PM newscast had a good chance to keep you all night.

And then they invented the remote, and the DVR, and 500 channels of stuff, and it got easier to be lazy, to have instant access to everything, all the time.

The music business worked sort of the same way.  You kept your music collection in stacks or piles or (if you're old enough) milk crates, but for some reason, it was easier to buy new music than to sift through the old stuff.  And it was such a hassle to get up and reload the CD changer, or (if you're old enough) restack the turntable.  I used to occasionally look through my shelves of CDs and think: When was the last time I listened to that?

And then they invented the MP3 player and the iPod and it got easier to be lazy, to have instant access to your whole music collection, all the time.

Everything, always, effortlessly.

That's the direction the web seems to be driving towards.  And what it means -- or at least, one of the things I think it means -- is that the new stuff isn't just competing with other new stuff anymore, it's competing with old stuff, too, on equal footing.  

I thought about that this weekend, when I read this article in the New York Times.  It's been hard to find a really big hit on the web -- a "franchise" hit, we call it in Hollywood -- and some people are wondering what that says about the financial opportunities in new media.  

I think the mistake we make here in Hollywood is that we think of the web as just some kind of turbo-charged distribution channel -- a more efficient and flexible way to get our stuff onto your screen -- whichever screen you prefer using.    But it seems to me that the really exciting, fun, and revolutionary part of the web is in the social realm: connecting and linking and socializing with people.  The web as a one-way screen may not be as attractive to people as the social web.

No matter how you slice it, the entertainment business is really about: you sit, you watch.  Oh, sure, you can "favorite" something and send it along to your friends, but that's still a one-way operation.  It's not social.  In fact, in a way, it's anti-social.  It's what you do instead of talking or communicating with people.  It's one of the reasons going to the movies is such a popular activity on dates: it's two hours when you don't have to talk...

It's a rather new phenomenon, though, this nighttime activity of sitting on the sofa, watching stuff.  In all of those Jane Austen novels, people used to sit around together, in groups, and chit chat, or listen to music, or play games.

Groups. Chat.  Music.  Games.

We might be going back to that.