Andy Kessler recently posted a series of posts about his view on the future of media and web. In "Media 2.Uh-Oh", he consolidates the six different posts into one piece. In it, he describes how the media model of old, owning the pipe, has been broken by the wave of new Web 2.0 technologies and the resulting battlefield requires a new set of strategies. In the past, large fortunes were made by controlling the pipe to the end consumer, whether this be phone, cable, newspaper, magazine or cellular. However, today, there is no dedicated end to end pipe. The newspapers have experienced this, video & cable are starting down this path and cellular will enjoy this once dual mode phones hit enmass.
Factors driving this even further are the "layering" of application architectures (web services & AJAX), P2P and low/zero marginal cost internet distribution. He goes into a series of recommendations around establishing virtual pipes (many would call some "networks") and "Going Wide". It is a good read. Enjoy.