Sam Donaldson On Toppled Potentates and Other Net Revolutions

I think the future of the Internet is unlimited, and the consequences are obvious. It will revolutionize society. How are you going to be a dictator if all the guys in the bush are on the Internet? Dictatorships can be very hard to maintain when everybody knows how everyone else is living. When the guys in the bush are looking at the Western world and everyone is driving a Lexus, it creates a powerful appetite for that.

If you log onto my Web site, be prepared for a different Sam. No one said, "Be different," but we can do programs that we couldn't get away with on commercial television. I knew the words "the real Slim Shady" before most Americans, and I denounced Eminem before most people did. I was talking about Napster long before The New York Times was.

The Internet won't change the way news is gathered, except for the speed. Traditional journalism will continue, but it will all be delivered on the Web. ABC, NBC, and CBS will not rely on affiliates; we will put all the programming on the Web. But some of the people at the fork of the crick will not get it; the valleys of Appalachia won't have it.

What we have to work on is improving the ability to use the Internet at high speeds. If you log on today and look at streaming video, it's a pretty bad picture. It jerks a lot, it stops, and it buffers. Why do you want to watch that? I'm not such an egotist that I think people will say, "We'll watch Donaldson even if we have to look at him through six layers of black cloth!"

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Ziff Davis Smart Business.