Will online video kill the TV star? That’s the question panelists tried to answer during the Video Advertising panel at Digital Hollywood. “The TV and movie industries have a value chain—grips, actors, screenwriters, etc. What do we do in our industry so it doesn’t get decimated like it has with newspapers or music?” asked Steve Robinson, president of video ad firm Panache.

Responses varied, of course, but the consensus was that there was no way the TV industry would survive in its current form: 

The least optimistic was Kevin Yen, YouTube’s director of strategic partnerships: “Industries evolve, there’s consolidation and things change. We need to develop the economics that support this current model. We can’t take the perspective that there’s a big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that rewards this [legacy] structure.”

“We’re still applying TV metrics on the cost side to the Web, and that’s never going to work,” said Nada Stirratt, MTV’s EVP of digital advertising. “We need to actually look at the investments we’re making in web originals, look at the level of engagement they get, and value them accurately.”

“It’s taken a long time, but we’re shifting at NBC so that the TV content we produce can automatically get repurposed for the web,” said Mark Marvel, senior director of video monetization for msnbc.com. “We’re trying to get more out of our existing talent and burn through less resources, I think you’ll see more of that happening across the board—with smaller Upfronts, more pilots being sent right to the web, etc.” 

“We’re spending too much time trying to figure out what model is going to work, when it’s clear that we just need to be better at following consumers.” said Jason Forbes, group SVP of strategy, new products & marketing at Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Cable Media Sales. “If we don’t, we’re just going to lose the revenue—like the music industry and Napster (NSDQ: NAPS), or like newspapers in their attempts to catch up online.”

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