YouTube and Television

Burgess and Green (2009) state, "YouTube, even more than television, is a particularly unstable object of study, marked by dynamic change (both in terms of videos and organization), a diversity of content (which moves with a different rhythm to television but likewise flows through, and often disappears from, the service), and a similar quotidian frequency, or 'everydayness'" (6). Relatedly, an interesting recent phenomenon to note are the dwindling audiences of cable news: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/03/why-cable-news-shedding-viewers/35820/. What can we say about the networked nature of YouTube and its growing dominance over television as the most dominant form of visual communication? Also, what does it mean that some networks experience certain drops in viewership while the number of hits on any given YouTube upstart/viral video only continues to rise? It seems that things like ratings and viewership will soon give way to an alternative form of assessing popularity based on total number of views versus ratings.