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Here’s Barry Diller at his provocative best (or worst, depending on your point of view):

“There aren’t that many people in that many closets who are really talented and can’t find their way out.” “Making a television program or a movie or a song — there are going to be relatively few who do that because there’s simply not enough talent. Maybe that’s an utter birdbrained statement, but there you are — it’s mine.”

Mr. Diller was sharing his insights about the future of new media. In a nutshell his take is that “real talent” is rare, and the proliferation of user-generated media such as blogging and podcasting is much ado about nothing, The way he sees it, the real game is to match high-quality content (and the A-list talent that creates it) to new-media delivery systems.

For two interpretations of the world according to Barry, check out this post on the Fast Company blog, and this article is USA Today by Kevin Maney.

So, is Diller right? According to him, hits drive media consumption and a small core of high-quality; i.e., not user generated, content will get it done. Maybe I’m guilty of drinking the web 2.0 CoolAid, but I think he is about to be proven wrong. Yes, professionally produced content will dominate, but the old 20/80 ratio of percent of available content to percent of total consumption can’t last. Key to its demise is the long tail of content made available to us by the internet.

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