In just the same way as the newspapers are talking themselves out of business, so are radio and TV now seeking psychotherapy and appropriate anti-depression medication to face the “future”?
The future they envisage is the dreaded democratisation of radio and TV through computers and the internet.
With so much content now available to everyone, there is no reason why thousands of savvy youngsters shouldn’t start their own pirate radio and TV stations from home, web casting to a private audience.
(Does this contravene copyright, or if they are not charging for their services, is this defined as private use?)
After all, anyone can download simple radio and TV scheduling software, load their server with content, and then simply make it available to whoever they provide with the link.
Here’s the scary part – they are doing it – currently only on “radio”, but full TV will come in soon. Kids are arranging their own music tracks, interleaved with their own DJ links, and then simply putting on their hard drive, and providing “web-radio” to their friends.
The interesting thing is that radio and TV professionals view this with the same fear that journalists fear the blogs – that millions of private bloggers and webcasters are going to put them out of business.
Sure, the quantity will be there, but will it have quality? Remember also the “Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility” that I keep on calling up? As you give people more of the same, the less they find use for it.
Give yourself just ten minutes to surf blogs on your favourite subject. What do you notice? There’s masses there, some people have something interesting to contribute (but not many), and the writing is atrocious. Of course it’s atrocious – these people can’t write.
The same goes for radio and TV. You can make the technology and the distribution available to as many people as you like, but that doesn’t make them broadcasters.
To be a journalist, or a broadcaster, you need talent, skill and experience. You don’t get that from web log software.
In the same way, music mixing, MIDI and sampling software don’t make musicians.
Here’s a quote from a really interesting article by Michael Hirschorn in the December 2006 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
“Online news, micro-chunked, consumed on the fly, is fast food; the newspaper, fed by its newly invigorated journalist-brands, is the sit-down meal. In this marginally more optimistic future history, the roles of print and digital are inverted. Original news – in the form of stories, postings, and community – begins online, while print offers an intelligent digest that readers (and not only the elite and elderly) can peruse at their leisure. You could even call it Reader’s Digest.”
We are facing a plethora of radio and TV stations, some people say we will have as many as 200 channels available by the end of 2008.
But will any of them be watchable? Most of DStv already is unwatchable. There is no such thing as free TV and radio. People pay for them. And they pay dearly with the only non-renewable resource they have – time.
People, who value their time, are highly selective about what they watch. Just because here are 200 channels, does that mean they will even watch significant parts of their favourite channels? The chances are they will do what they have always done, go to where the content is quality.
And if that confuses you, it’s best (before you reach for the Prozac), to note that quality is subjective. As Susan Tyler Eastman says in Media Programming, “Programmers are well advised to be careful with the word quality as long as so little consensus exists about what it is. It might be better to strive toward shows that are popular (or critically acclaimed) by external standards, rather than programmes that have intrinsic quality.”
Howard Thomas is a media business consultant, trainer and specialist in audience psychology.