Bill Gates has been looking at the fairly near future of the media and his prognosis is equally bad for scheduled broadcasting and print on paper. Speaking to the the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit this week he forecast that the “transition point” for the move from paper to electronic reading would come in the next five years.

According to Seattlepi, he said: “The Internet is now cheap enough that the idea of having every household in America watching a different video feed has become practical.” While some infrastructure improvement was needed, “broadcast infrastructure over these next five years will not be viewed as competitive”.

Howard Owens’s take on this is that he believes that rather than most people doing their reading online, video will become the dominant online content medium.

I have a feeling that reading still has a good future. It is not only that there is pleasure in reading, but it remains a lot quicker to read 1,000 words than listen to 1,000 words.