The NAB's David Rehr chose to make some (pretty thin) hay out of pointing out that YouTube's tagline is "Broadcast Yourself." Rehr's conclusion was that the word "broadcast" isn't outdated. The point - professional broadcasters are more important, and that the online videos are just broadcaster wannabes. This was the only lesson drawn from YT.

Let's examine the word broadcasting, a centuries-old farming term.

You're out in the field. You can either put down one corn seed at a time. Or you can cast them, broadly, as far as you can throw. From WiseGeek:

During the earliest days of commercial radio, several engineers in the Midwestern United States decided that the concept of broadcasting fit their own concept of radio transmissions. In the same way that farmers broadcast seeds over a large field, radio transmitters broadcast their signals over a large area of reception.

It used to be a hell of a thing to plant the fields. You needed to go one seed at a time or cast out a handful of seeds and hope they took root. Then came along the seed broadcaster - an expensive piece of equipment only for professionals, to be sure, but a huge improvement. You just needed a couple of horses, a cart, and you were out for a fun-filled day of seeding.

You may have a seed broadcaster in your garage. It's a cart that shoots out thousands of grass seeds across your lawn as you push it along, saving you the trouble of having to plant your lawn a seed at a time. (Although this would be an excellent excuse for getting out of the house all weekend, it would likely hurt your back.) This is much less expensive than a professional seed broadcaster. Would you want to do a field with it? No. But you certainly wouldn't look down your nose at thousands of people who had them and were willing to help with your work.

So, for making a nice, uniform, homogeneous product spread out across a wide area, you can't beat a broadcaster. (Well, fine - roll in some sod if you want. You still can't roll in corn or a fine tomato patch like I have.)

But this isn't the only way to plant. When you want a garden of different varieties, you need to go that extra seed-by-seed step. And it's worth it. To get a garden with flowers and vegetables that appeal to all sorts of people, it takes more effort than throwing what you've got into the wind. A botanical garden, with its many different intruiging choices, will have plants that appeal to everyone. You may hate some of them (I don't see the appeal in big, ugly Sunflowers, but lots of people do) and others may only find one or two to their liking. But in the whole of the garden you wind up with something unique - and something a hell of a lot nicer than a quarter-acre of green grass.

People who use YouTube plant the garden a seed at a time. For most, that one plant is just fine. They'll show it to their friends and that will be it. Others can choose from the plants and customize their garden. There's no wrong way to do it.

Except to look at the video people are creating and snidely say "That doesn't look as good as my lawn. I used a professional seed broadcaster."

- Steve Safran, Sr. Vice President, Media 2.0, AR&D