If the revolution will not be televised, will it be in the newspaper? What CBS and cable tell us about newspapers on the internet.

Network profits grew and grew in the face of cable, even when audiences started wobbling. In fact throughout a period of rapid change and innovation, they faced up to cable, VCRs, DVRs and the internet. And they're still standing. Is there anything to learn from that?

The battle looks similar to newspapers' fight to thrive in an internet era in some ways, and in others it looks totally different.

    * Cable TV takes off in the Sixties and suddenly instead of a cosy oligopoly, there are many more channels available. Similar.
    * There is a major expansion in choice for consumers. Similar.
    * But adoption of the technology is relatively slow and takes decades to become ubiquitous. Not similar.
    * The providers are small in TV terms but there remain big barriers to entry. Not similar.
    * Cable TV does not give media access to the public, despite regulation encouraging it. Not similar.
    * The old medium is "free", the new one is "paid". Not similar.
    * The incumbents were being attacked on multiple fronts (cable, satellite, VCR, DVR, internet). Similar.
    * The battle lines in attracting advertisers were drawn around reach for the networks and precision for the cable stations. Similar in some ways and not similar in others.
    * The challenger product is not a new medium, just a new way of consuming the old medium. Not similar.

So what is there to learn? The networks seemed to stay on top by being heavily involved in the new form, investing in channels, experimenting with them. They had skills and knowledge which could be brought to bear on what was not, after all, a new medium and there were barriers to entry which made the investment less of a gamble. And cable, while increasingly available, didn't entirely smash the network's, well, network effects. So their audience grew slowly.

The networks continued to own properties that delivered big audiences, even if they weren't as big as they used to be. And as long as the networks were still the best way to reach a mass audience, the diminishing size of that mass audience wasn't terribly important.

They found out that if you invest big money to develop or own major sports programming, news magazine shows, drama, franchise series and lately reality TV, you can keep out poorer intruders and hang on to mass audiences. The most successful challenge to the networks may actually have come from Fox throwing huge money at building a new network, rather than from an explosion of niche cable TV channels.

I hate to say it, but I see very little for us to be inspired by here.

Maybe, in fact, it's the internet's challenge to TV that can give us something to chew on. Jon Fine's piece in Business Week this week lauds CBS's strategy online. Their dilemma online mimics ours quite closely. They flirted with the idea of subscriptions (pay-to-download TV programs) but now believe in their old-school way of business - grabbing audience and selling ads

"Three fourths of our business is ad supported," says [Quincy] Smith [president of CBS interactive efforts]. "We'll stick to what we know."

What is so impressive about their strategy? Well, says Fine, they bought Wallstrip - the essence of which is attractive distinctive content aimed at a small valuable audience. It cost $5 million and makes no money. But the value in the deal may well be in acquiring experience. How do you produce online video content at a low-enough cost to make money? If you as CBS can find the answer to this question then one day you can build a whole new network of sites and programs just like this one. And the best way to find something is to start looking.

Fine also cites CBS's purchase of Last.FM which used to be Audioscrobbler, and whose technology is, if I recall, largely open source. It's a music networking site which creates "radio" stations and recommendations based on how your tastes stack up to someone else's who shares some common ground. If CBS want it as a marketing tool to understand and access music consumers, it's a very expensive tool. And one that risks copying by others if they can't get Last.FM out of sight of rivals and benefiting from the network effects that sustain eBay, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook.

Fine says that CBS's strategy is coherent philosophically. I'm not sure that isn't overstating it a bit. CBS are at least putting themselves closer to the action so they can see opportunities and understand the businesses of micro-programming and social networking in case they really take off. The problem for CBS is that it isn't even a little bit coherent commercially yet and a key tenet of CBS's philosophy is to find new ways to make money.

But CBS's battle looks distinctly like our newspaper online dilemma. CBS know they have to be "there", they also know that they can't be certain what "there" is yet. They can't see a way of making money right now but nonetheless they've used acquisitions to make some bets and learn a thing or two along the way. If someone is going to find a way to make this work, there's a better chance, they hope, that it will be them if they play with some (very expensive) educational toys.

And us? Newspapers on the other hand are still doing the equivalent of streaming programming online for free. Other than the (disputed) success of WSJ and NYT, we haven't even found a way of selling our product online yet. The networks at least had distinct ownable content in the first place, and have managed to control YouTube a bit, allowing things that they see as promotional, but removing material that is just stealing revenue or audience from them. Newspapers have no defensive strategy on this one - and it's too late to get one.

It's what TV networks are not doing that interests me. They are not throwing in the towel and declaring that TV is dead.

They produce younger shows to attract younger audiences, they are constantly looking for new blockbusters and squeezing every penny out of old ones. They use online to promote what they do and to extend the user experience. And if they can't create the new audiences they need, they buy the channels and people that can. They use new technology to generate extra revenue (SMS voting, selling on iTunes).

They keep trying to make breakthrough programs and delivery in their old medium while teaching themselves about the new one. They pick up the challenge of hi-def at the same time as sending content onto iPods.

Our problem is that we are neither innovating enough in our old medium, nor are we learning quickly enough in our new one.

How can we learn more quickly and how can we do it cheaper than CBS? I think US newspapers should start looking at local information rivals and start buying them pretty aggressively. The online medium in infinite, but the supply of good local content producers is not and it is therefore ownable, defensible and valuable. There are only two possible obvious of making money online for now - subscription or advertising - and both depend on attractive exclusive content. We have the luxury of geographical boundaries and that limits the amount of useful stuff knocking around. Our paper brand can give a boost that creates a beloved network effect. And away we go.

Like CBS we can't hope to bet on any sure things. But we need to expose ourselves to micro-journalism in all its internet forms so we can start growing our own in the future. We have to accept that we are ignorant, and that we need to look outside for help. If it's local, useful and online then we should be interested in doing it or buying it.

Secondly we need to innovate more aggressively in print. Free newspapers are a great start. Hispanic titles too. But as I mention here at least once a day, the secret for our paid products is the development of flexible distribution techniques that enable us to customize our print products.

Personally my first wish-list item would be a company (or maybe just a couple of top-notch programmers) to connect my subscriber database to a consumer GPS machine and have it be able to tell my drivers what to leave and where. Then the programmers can make my database more usable and let people order tomorrow's paper as a standalone if they text me before midnight.

Then, for Christmas, I want to buy myself a company that can produce micro sorters for the back of vans that can read the subscriber/GPS data and prepare or at least sort custom packages automatically in transit.

For Father's Day you can get me socks again. I don't want to bankrupt you.