Disintermediation of content is a theory, not a reality.
It is not about quality content. Not today, anyway. There are millions of people producing great content lost in a world that reached media over-saturation more than a decade ago. Singers, songwriters, filmmakers, and other content creators whose skills surpass those of the established veterans are all over the world, but they will never achieve success; their superior products will never be found within the white noise that is the Internet. They will never earn a living from their creations, let alone reap a fortune (as your examples suggest).
The experiment performed by Louis C.K. was successful, not because his content was excellent, but because his content was valuable to fans who already knew him. He has a long history as an industry writer for top-tier comedy shows. He has prior Emmy nominations. He has appeared as a comedian on Leno, Letterman, Conan, and other late night shows more than 35 times over the past decade. He has a very popular eponymous weekly television sitcom. In short, he was already quite famous before he attempted to cut out the middle man. His experiment would not have made close to a million dollars without his prior exposure–which was thanks to backing from the entertainment industry.
Very few people had heard of Justin Bieber before he signed with Braun, received financial backing from Usher, and made his deal with Island Records. Without the established music industry, Justin would still be posting iSight videos on YouTube. As an educated and involved American, I consider myself a barometer of what the “average person” might have been exposed to, and I had never even heard of Jonathan Coultan until you mentioned him on MacBreak Weekly. I assure you, that speaks volumes.
I am sure you have a psychological stake in this discussion, because you lump yourself right in with the others previously mentioned. But TWiT’s success is not because your content is exceptional. There are many technology podcasts with content quality just as good (and perhaps superior) to the shows on your network. It is naive for you to believe that you would be where you are today without your prior history of industry backing. TWiT’s success is mostly due to your past hosting on television and radio. Without those experiences, you would have had no name recognition and no influential contacts in the technology industry. Dvorak, Gruber, Ihnatko, Breen. Established authors and pundits would not be regulars on your show without your past industry backing. How do I know? Because these same people don’t routinely appear on other high-quality shows that are created by people who were never on television.
Andy is right: your examples are data points, not proofs. You list four people as evidence (and most of them are really non-evidence, for the reasons previously stated). There are more than 7,000,000,000 people alive on planet earth today. Four data points in a set of 7 billion does not a proof make. Offer 10,000 examples of content creators who achieved success solely based on their own merits and with no financial backing from established corporations or wealthy individuals, and you’ll go a long way to convincing us that disintermediation of content is (becoming) a reality. Hell, how about just one thousand?
The fundamental implication that we’ve reached (or are even approaching) some Utopian age in which the Internet provides the mechanisms of an authentic meritocracy for content creators is laughable. The established industries still run the show and will until we are long gone.
P. S. It’s likewise humorous that you scorn those who “ignore reality” and “beat their heads against the wall” as they suggest the world should be the way they would prefer, and in the next breath suggest that politicians would vote based on the will of their constituents. How utterly naive. Politicians respond to money, not votes. They will pass the legislation that the industry tells them to pass, regardless of the number of letters and phone calls they receive. They know who butters their bread.