The Death of Indie Distro?

Written in 11/05, I'd like to learn what happened to turn the situation around (if anything).  I’m aware of, but don't know Punk Planet or Venus, so I don't know if they are still working with IPA/Bigtop Newsstand.  I could feel the frustration of these people coming through, though.  It must be a really helpless feeling to know that the one group that is supposed to support you has debilitating troubles of its own. 

          One quote that confused me:

"BigTop is the last distributor that specializes in the small independent press. So do you go to a big national distributor, who doesn't understand what you do and doesn't understand why you'd want to sell 15,000 copies instead of hundreds of thousands or millions? And those distributors have even more arduous payment terms than BigTop has."

How necessary is it that the (larger) distributor "understand you," as long as your readers get it?