To watch most of his favorite programs, James Finn doesn't turn on the TV. He boots up his computer.
The 25-year-old manager of a Baltimore movie theater spends as many as four hours a day on ManiaTV.com, checking out music videos, extreme sports highlights and short films streamed over the Internet.
"I used to watch TV three or four hours a day," Finn said. "Now I'm down to about two hours of TV a week."
Five years ago, at the height of the dot-com boom, entrepreneurs and visionaries predicted that new online venues would overtake traditional media as viewers like Finn enjoyed shows and other content tailored to their tastes and schedules.
It didn't happen.
High-speed Internet connections were rare, and few people were willing to wait hours for a 10-minute video clip to download. Plus, most people's idea of on-demand entertainment was a drive to the local video store. The brutal tech bust seemed to close the book on the aspirations of those who envisioned the Internet transforming the way news and entertainment were produced and consumed.
But it turns out the dot-com crash may just have been the prologue. After licking their wounds, a rash of companies -- including small players such as ManiaTV, Web giants such as Yahoo Inc. and traditional media titans such as Walt Disney Co. -- are again investing heavily to bring more audio and video to the Internet.
This time, though, few people expect a crash because the companies are making money, capturing audiences and, yes, transforming the way news and entertainment are produced and consumed.
Technology has improved. People have grown accustomed to getting news on their BlackBerries and watching video on their computers. And old-media giants are working with the new-media leaders to make changes more soberly.
More than 20% of people who read newspapers rely primarily on online editions. Consumers watched 2.9 billion music videos, live performances and interviews on the Yahoo Music website last year. Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store sells 40 million songs a month.
Google Inc., which sells online ads, vies with Time Warner Inc. as the world's most valuable media company. Advertisers spent $9.6 billion to place ads online in the U.S. last year. That's still only 6% of all ad spending, but it's growing fast.
Rather than supplanting traditional media, the Internet is viewed as a way to support and expand it.
