Frank Beacham

As a child of the 1970s "Portapak" revolution, I'll always have a weak spot for Sony--the visionary company that fired the engines of the portable video revolution.

A few months ago--in a New York City coffee shop that I frequent--a waitress deposited her brand new $6,000-plus HD camcorder on just the spot I had been expecting my breakfast.

America's over-the-air broadcasters are facing the threat of a new kind of convergence--this one consisting of a volatile mix of right-wing politics and alternative distribution technologies.

It was 1996, almost exactly a decade ago, when I wrote a column for this publication posing some questions about the future of the Internet.

In the rush of new production technologies that constantly come and go, it's easy to forget valuable tools that have been around for a long, long time simply because they do a single job very well

At about the same time television news sold its soul to the devil, a savvy Internet innovator was standing at the crossroads to salvage the wreckage.

This is a move to hyperlocalism—one designed to re-invent the major NBC stations before they are absorbed into the 500-channel abyss of pay television channels.

In the end it wasn't Fritz Hollings, Jack Valenti or the FCC that took the first step into the explosive minefield of content protection. It was - to the surprise of many - Bill Gates.