Fred Wilson, affable tech venture capitalist and A-list blogger gives an anecdotal insight into media prospects based on the tastes of his kids (one of whom blogs too). I try, but it’s hard not to like Wilson. Here are his observations:

1) When they walk into a DVD store, they rarely walk out with a movie. It’s almost always the first season of a TV show they’ve heard is good. They’ll go see a movie in the theatre but don’t really enjoy watching movies at home or on their computers.

They feel that TV shows are better written and more interesting. And the entertainment value is certainly more compelling. For roughly US$40, they got something like 25 episodes of Brothers and Sisters. That’s almost 17 hours of entertainment…

It makes me wonder where this is headed. I don’t know enough about the economics of TV shows versus fims, but it may be that digital technology is changing the way the younger generation will consume filmed entertainment in some important ways. Something to think about. And maybe why the writers are striking.

2) They will play games whenever given the opportunity … It doesn’t matter what game it is and what device it’s on.

3) When we were without broadband internet for three days in the Barrier Reef, they were a little antsy but were able to stay on top of Facebook messages via my BlackBerry. When we got back to a broadband internet connection, they spent the afternoon happily entertained by the Internet for hours. Emily had a huge smile on her face so I asked her what she’d do without the Internet. She said, “Dad, the Internet is my primary form of entertainment”…

4) The only time they listen to radio is when we have it on in the car for short rides. If it’s a long ride, we almost always plug in the iPod and they’ll take turns DJ’ing … they find all of their music on the Internet via myspace, last.fm, hype machine, mp3 blogs, and social networking with their friends…

5) They still read books the way we did as kids. That doesn’t seem to have changed a bit…

6) They love magazines and read all the fashion, cooking, and gossip magazines they can get their hands on…

7) They don’t seem particularly interested in newspapers. They get most of their news on the Internet. Josh will read the sports pages over breakfast and the girls will glance at the front page. Important current events and politics will sometimes generate enough interest that they’ll read the front page portion of a story and then launch into a discussion over breakfast. But I don’t see a commitment to newspapers like we have in my generation and my parents generation.

So what does that tell me…

• Video games and Internet should be enjoying the highest multiples but there’s no surprise there. the market has that figured out.
• Newspapers and radio should be suffering from the lowest multiples and again the market has that figured out.
• There are sectors of the entertainment business that are better than others. If my kids are a good sample…then TV is a better category to be in than films.
• The music business is still a good business, kids are still listening to music the way we did. They are finding it differently and paying for it differently, but they still consume it as passionately as we did … those who figure out the new model in music are going to do well. It won’t be the major labels though.
• Mass market magazines might be undervalued…
• Books may be the one category of media and entertainment that aren’t disrupted by digital technology. or maybe we just haven’t seen the technology that will do it…but at least in my family, books are still a growth sector.

Of course, my sample of three kids who live together, were raised by the same parents, and have access to most of what they want may not be and probably isn’t representative…