By David Taber.

In media, there are periods sometimes of a decade or more when a formula works very well, producing quality entertainment and profits for all. 1930’s radio dramas, 1950s MGM musicals, 1965-75 situation comedies, 1980-2000 TV advertisements. But after one of these golden ages is over, the models can never be revived.

In some cases, the intervals end with a clear event, such as WW II or the end of the ASCAP strike. But it’s not always an earthquake — more often, the tide shifts imperceptibly: you notice after awhile that “there haven’t been many of those lately….” For example, in the 80s and 90s, the best advertising creatives, writers, and directors worked on TV ads that were visually beautiful and emotionally compelling. But the economic malaise of the early 2000s, TiVo, and the rise of viral video has moved the best creative campaigns away from TV. BMW, Coke, BlendTec (“Will it Blend?”), and others have produced campaigns that would kill in the Clio TV category, let alone the Innovative Media one. Meanwhile, over the last five years all US TV ads have gotten less and less compelling.

It’s unlikely that the great ads will ever return to TV again. Web video and multimedia are too measurable, too easily targeted, and too relevant to lose out to TV. The audience will get just the ads that are interesting to them, and the advertisers will enjoy higher conversion ratios. Advertisers will continue to put their A-team on Internet media because that’s where the yield is. TV ads will be around forever, but they’ll mainly be vaguely targeted branding campaigns, and they’ll be no more strategic than radio ads are.

But that secular change is only half of the story. The TV content that’s sandwiched between the commercials is also changing forever, even if you haven’t seen it yet.

The Screen Writer’s Guild strike is a watershed event. It will likely go on for months, and many leading TV series will never recover. As in the 1988 strike, once new episodes stop flowing, the viewing public will forget how much they liked “that show.” By the time the shows return after the strike, there will be unrecoverable declines in audience, to the point that some (like the 80’s hit, “Moonlighting”) won’t even try to restart. In the meantime, the networks will produce a panic supply of reality, game, award, sports, and election-politics shows — anything that doesn’t need script writers. While these shows will fill the airwaves, they will drive the quality audience away…and online.

The demographics of TV audience versus online are telling. The more highly educated and wealthy the audience, the less they watch TV and the more time they spend online. The crossover point today is a household income of $75K, and it drops about $10K a year. Soon, the crossover point for TV vs online hours will be at the median US household. Even worse, looking at audience demographics by age, the key 14-27 demographic has been more likely to spend time online than on TV — and that was before the “vast wasteland” of TV content got hit by the writers’ strike.

The Big Deal here is that the entire ecosystem of hot advertisers and quality content is moving online as fast as it can. Smart web video producers will start offshoring content to English-speaking countries so they can get writers immediately productive. Both advertising and content will be changed forever because of the ability to microtarget the content and the relevant ads, as well as the real-time measurement down to the individual level. Done correctly, online media makes everyone a “Nielsen family.” Further, narrowcasting down to the individual becomes economically reachable for advertisers.

In the long run, technology such as IPTV could enable these online advantages for “standard” TV. If that happens (subsequent to the ASTV digital transition in 2009), TV can become truly competitive with the web again. But that’s years away. For now, we should be enjoying the Golden Age of online content as it develops in the coming months.