Remember 1995? The talk was all on “convergence”, how digital technologies were bringing the media together and the world would become one great big “global village”.
We talked about how the internet would take over all the other media, how the press and free-to-air radio and TV would die and how by 2000 we would enter the age of the “paperless office”. This was what convergence would be all about. Ho hum.
South Africa’s proposed digital transmission legislation says nothing about content. But, it’s in content that the silent revolution is happening – in all media: radio, TV, cinema, press, and new media.
The Economist recently reported the following trends:
- In the US, the shares of giants in the television, film, radio and print industries, have fallen 25% behind the S&P 500 in the past two years.
- Hollywood took seven percent less at the box office in 2005 than in 2004.
- The growth in sales of DVDs has slowed; internet video threatens satellite and cable systems.
- Dozens of advertisers who have been chased away from satellite TV by the PVR are shifting their budgets from television to the internet and billboards, among other places.
So, what are the lessons here? Media businesses have two products to sell: content to readers and viewers and audience to advertisers. Abroad, media companies are adapting to the internet, even though at this stage making money out of advertising is a dismal failure.
The old media – radio, TV and the press – will command audiences for many years yet. New media are aware of this and are buying into radio, while websites are launching print editions. At the same time, radio and TV remain the best place to advertise blockbuster movies.
But abroad there is broadband access to the internet, a luxury that most South Africans do not have. Sure people in South Africa are connected, but that’s only the people who can afford a computer and Telkom’s exorbitant telephone rates. This means that old media and old media ways of doing business are still in full force. But in the media, there is no place for complacency.
The greed of Telkom and the low internet subscriptions suit radio, TV and the press. But we do have 3G devices on cellphones that already carry radio and TV. Sceptics say that people will never watch TV on the small screen, but we adapted to smaller screen when TV overtook the movies. Who says it will not happen again?
First, broadcasters (old media still reign supreme) must find new income streams and other ways of selling audiences to advertisers. Second, content is going to have to adapt to lower production costs, small (niche and specialised) audiences, and reversioning (re-editing old programmes for a different audience) to new distribution pipelines.
Convergence is all about exploding channels of niched and more specialised media. Convergence is all about giving audiences the choice to consume the media they really want. Radio and TV receivers are now incorporated into mobile phones, so my bet is that it is there that the future lies for Africa.
We must not wait to see what the rest of the world is going to do about the genres, forms and formats for content streamed to mobile phones – we should start experimenting ourselves. It’s risky, but it’s far more effective than giving audiences copycat global schlock.
Howard Thomas has been working in entertainment and media for 36 years. His experience with TV started from the beginning in South Africa, and he is now a media business consultant, trainer and specialist in audience psychology.