Daly: TV is not dead: Late-night talk-show host sees Internet model aping cable

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Late-night talk-show host Carson Daly offered an insider’s view of the future of television during a speech at the storied Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel here yesterday afternoon. The 34-year-old entertainer, who climbed the ladder from radio to TV, said he has straddled two worlds — old-school and new-school media — for years now.
“I’m a traditional media guy by day and a new media student by night,” Daly said. “My thinking has been if I live in both of these worlds maybe I can bring them together.”
Call it a “dual citizenship” of traditional and modern television, he said. “I’m passionate about what I do, I’m passionate about where the industry’s heading.”
Still, new media distribution outlets such as online and mobile aren’t the end-all-be-all, Daly said. “I believe that TV is nowhere near dead.”
Indeed, every homemade YouTube superstar is still aspiring toward one end — the big screen or the TV screen, he said.
“The big play is to get a deal with the big boys, the TV execs,” Daly added.
“I think it’s pretty funny that the buzz today is about empowering users, but TV’s been doing that for decades,” he said.
Distrubtions
When cable television came to the scene in the 1980s, it forced market players to approach everything differently.
“The Internet to me is just a cracked-out version of what happened to cable,” he said. “The biggest difference is the distribution. This is where we must think of things differently.”
“If you ask TV what’s the biggest problem I think they’ll tell you that they’re losing viewers,” Daly said. However, he said social-networking sites that engage TV show fans could ebb that flow, he said.