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Satellite satellite - where are you?

Mass customization has given way to extreme personalization as content streams are now sliced thin enough to allow individual subscriptions. Blogging, podcasting, Tivo, OnDemand, iPodding, mobile entertainment and satellite radio all gyrate around the commercial opportunity that is giving people the content they want when they want it.

In the last few weeks, I’ve heard Orb and MobiTV (Idetic), spoke with the folks who make Sling Media and Slim Devices, makers of the SqueezeBox. The message is like a drumbeat: consumer-content-consumer-content.

Put on top of that the increased feed-reading capacity brought by my new Treo650+GPRS. I see that Doc’s shopping for a new car radio and Fred Wilson has a business take on the Tivo problem, riffing off Om’s do-an-Apple post which kicked off so much chatter that I sipped at in my other feeds. Further evidence of the march can be seen on if you hit Fred’s Tivo post directly - I bet your adsense will be as appropriate as mine was: I see an adsense serve for DirectTVvia RapidSatellite and his house ad for an HDRadio.

The same theme is everywhere - not surprising with 3GSM and Demo just having taken place. I like Jonathan’s take on 3GSM and SAPVenture’s Jeff Nolan’s take on Demo (along with the Blogging Demo blog).

I’m still reading though the Fast Company piece on Sirius v. XM that was pointed out by at least one of my feeds. It’s so hard to keep track of what’s interesting when perusing via mobile. Blazer and Bloglines are great together - but I wish the Bloglines interface as seen by mobiles had a checkbox to save posts rather than a per-post link so that you could submit several at a time. I also should see if there is a way to make Blazer have tabs so I could open other pages.

That’s (the hype and flutter, I mean) normally just par for the course, and not a big deal, but it’s funnier when I turn to today’s Wall St. Journal ($reg req’d) and see that some of this impact has begun to chew through to the profits of the big boys:

Viacom executives predicted that this year will be one of transition as the company reworks its mix of assets. It “will be remembered as the year of the reinvention of Viacom,” Mr. Redstone told Wall Street analysts on a conference call.

That reinvention includes shedding assets, including at least 40 under-performing radio stations and its Canadian movie-theater chain Famous Players. The company is also considering selling its theme parks.

Viacom now owns 185 stations. It plans to sell stations outside smaller markets so it can concentrate on its outlets in big cities. In the quarter, radio absorbed a $10.9 billion noncash impairment charge, leading to an operating loss of $10.7 billion, compared with operating income of $252 million a year earlier. Even without the charge, the radio unit’s operating income fell 9% to $231 million in the quarter. Radio revenue for the quarter was $550 million, compared with $551 million.

Game, match, and set. This is what happens when 20 minutes out of 60 are commercials and all the programs are pre-recorded. How can anyone be surprised?