Technology is, of course, to blame, although it is hard to nail it as a friend or foe of the media industry.
Technology was a big friend to the music business, which made a fortune from reselling Simon and Garfunkel albums - rights the industry already owned - on eight-track, cassette, and then on CD.
But then, oh no, it changed sides, ushering in the internet and the PC, the final music technologies, to devastate the industry's paid-for business model.
So, the record boys are on the hunt for new sources of revenue. There's a limit to how much more they can rack up the price of concert tickets and T-shirts, so they are offering artistes as sponsorship properties.
As with other media owners, if you can't charge for it, ask ad-land for the balance.
In this way, another hungry mouth crosses the border into ad-land, where the number of refugees queuing for food has already been expanded enormously due to the "have it now, have it free" culture of the internet.
The balance is also switching in the press. The last three London papers are free, and it is only a matter of time before the first of our national dailies goes free.
Every new online reader of newspaper and magazine content shifts this balance from paid-for to advertising-supported media consumption.
All this begs two questions. Will the supply of impacts through free media rise to meet demand? And if it does, then how will media consumers react to this rising clamour of advertising messages?
Fortunately, technology, having caused so much trouble for us, also has a solution.
New methods of targeting - by online behaviour, previous purchases and who people are, rather than by demographic silo - can match an ad to a specific consumer.
Advertisers will pay a premium price to be relevant and, once satisfied that their privacy is not at risk, users will welcome the chance to let the technology edit out poorly targeted, cheaply bought "chancer" ads that annoy millions for a target of thousands.
- Richard Eyre is chairman of Pintarget.com, richard.eyre@haymarket.com.