I like many people out there watched with envy as the Amazon Kindle 2 reached the first users and was unboxed and flaunted in podcast and blog reviews. Interestingly Nicholas Carlson of the Silicon Alley Insider recently pointing out that it costs the New York Times about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead.

As outlandish as that statement is the math is even more shocking, according to the Time’s Q308 10-Q and information Mr. Carson gathered from other sources it would seem that the cost of printing one of the nations premiere papers is conservatively $664 million per year. The papers top line revenue for the quarter ending September 2008 was $687 million (down from the $754 million on 07). The bottom line is that printing the paper is nearly 25% of the paper yearly gross revenue.

Now Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis has stated openly that the times has had “830,000 loyal readers who have subscribed to The New York Times for more than two years.” This mean that for $297 million (less then half the cost of printing the paper) the Times could supply every reader with a brand new Kindle (which cost $359 vs a one year 7 day subscription to the time which costs $348).

So I ask what is the Times waiting for, to put it simply they have fiscally jumped the shark. At the very least if they came up with some sort of Kindle/New York Time bundle each and every person that converted from print to Kindle would almost immediately add to the bottom line.

While I am sure there are those of you newsprint junkies who will never give up your hard copy, but perhaps in the end that experience might have to become a premium service.

So what other legacy technologies might be in the midst and or verge of technologically jumping the shark?

Ironically the New York Times in this article from March of 2008 points out that while it was predicted that mainframe computers would be no more by 1996, Television would kill radio, cars/planes would do in the railroads and the web would kill the newspaper, in fact many of these technologies ultimately find a sustainable, profitable life.

Of course as I wrote this I was going to say that even Happy Days the first to coin the term Jump the Shark is still existing in re-runs and or on Hulu. But alas like buggy whips the Fonz and family are no more not even in re-runs.

In case you like the Time think with the exception of Bugy whips there is no dead and dying technology you might glimpse this photographic collection honoring the technologically fallen.

So what is it that make the difference between the living and the dead/forgotten? While everything may enjoy it’s 15 minutes of fame, how does one sustain and survive when the party is over?

The Times in the a fore mentioned article might have said it best, “it is the business decisions that matter most: investing to retool the traditional technology, adopting a new business model and nurturing a support network of loyal customers, industry partners and skilled workers.”

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