Old media scramble to take on YouTube: Too little, too late

So the Big Boys are banding together to combat the YouTube phenomenon, eh?

A wise old Spanish man once said, "When eets too late, eets too little."

YouTube. Blogging. Anyone can create content now. The mode of distributing content has changed forever. For good or bad, the barriers to reaching an audience have fallen and newsprint and networks are suddenly as obsolete as vacuum tubes.

Tell me, how are these huge, bloated corporations going to become nimble enough to combat their own fate? They could probably throw a lot of money at some of the best minds out there, but they can't let those minds do their stuff. The best minds would be immediately frustrated by their lack of control. Fresh ideas tend to be killed by bureaucracy, politics and endless meetings.

Staying competitive going forward is going to take a radical makeover in the way business is done. But innovations happen at breakneck speed, and even members of the New Media trip themselves up if they stop to rest for even a moment. Look what happened to Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Think radical change can happen at a place like the News Corporation (NYSE:NWS)?

The Old Media doesn't even get it. They can hire people who do get it, but, as one of our own bloggers said recently (OK, about Wal-Mart), you can't easily turn the Titanic. It's an apt metaphor for what's going, er, down with the networks and newsprint.