Big Hits, The Long Tail, & Cable Television

This morning's Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on the Long Tail by Lee Gomes in his Portals column. Lee points out that for many companies, big hits still drive a very high percentage of total revenue and that despite the current fascination with the "long tail", companies should focus making their big hits even bigger.

I think that reasoning is a great breath of fresh air into the discussion about the Long Tail. The analogy I might draw is between network and cable television. Twenty years ago, Networks had a very dominant share of TV, more than 75%, but today that is down to under 50% (I believe, don't quote me on the exact numbers). Similarly, I think we will see the same slow growth for the Long Tail in online media. Twenty years from now, a web generation may still be hit driven, but the share those hits have of the total pie, while the largest overall, may have declined substantially.