Editor’s Note: Tip of the hat to Jerry Del Colliano’s Inside Music Media for pointing this one out.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal’s theater critic Terry Teachout gave readers a history lesson that the media elite should contemplate.

Fred Allen

His article, The New Media Crisis of 1949, points out the massive change in the media landscape when the initial television networks were formed. Before 1949, network radio was the medium for news, dramas, comedies, and the home of big stars like Fred Allen. However, when the TV stations began stringing the original networks together, viewing shot up, and nighttime radio listening crashed overnight.

Couple important points Teachout makes include that much like the current online media, the new media of television in 1949 lost lots of money. However, once the networks firmed up programming, the sets were purchased in homes, and advertising and commerce commenced. The stars of radio who were willing to figure out how TV worked won in the new medium. Those who didn’t were forgotten like an old Philco tube set nearly overnight.

Teachout’s point is that for those patient enough to accept the losses now, try creative approaches to monetization, while journalists and entertainers build their online brands will make it in the new space. The others might be relegated to conversations of “remember when we watched videos on an actual TV set?”