Influential advertising/media blogger Jack Myers predicts a "depression"--or, more precisely, an "advertising depression," over the next three years. Yikes! And Dow Jones picked up Myers' grim forecast, too, under the header, "Advertising Outlook Grows Dire As Industry Faces Shakeout."
Actually, Cable Gamers might be interested to know that while Myers predicts some huge fall-offs for some advertising categories, such as newspapers, and small fall-offs for most categories, Myers actually predicts a gain for some other categories, including cable TV. (Although the biggest winners, in percentage terms, are in such new-new media categories as online video.)
OK, so we're all getting inured to bad news, even if we don't really know what to do about such news.
But this week also brought some fresh insight on these issues,, from Slate.com's Jack Shafer, the 'zine's always interesting media columnist, who explained how the key issue was "interopability," from one media platform to another:
Perhaps the most prescient of all digital prophets was scholar W. Russell Neuman, whose 1991 book, The Future of the Mass Audience, saw how the Web would overturn the existing order before the public World Wide Web even existed. The media—newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, cable, motion pictures, games, music, books, newsletters—all resided in separate "unique, noncompetitive" analog silos. Translating and transmitting from one format to another was "an expensive, labor-intensive endeavor," Neuman writes.
By introducing these varied—and often monopolistic—media to a "single, universal, multipurpose network," the digital Web destroyed the old barriers and created new competitive pressures. For end users, viewing last night's Dave Letterman monologue or cruising Craigslist or scanning today's headlines or reading one's inbox or listening to the Timbaland/Cornell collaboration now happens inside the same space. In other words, CBS, the Times, Universal Music, Verizon, Blockbuster video, and anybody else who wants your media attention is fighting for your attention (mindshare and dollars) in the same kiosk. It only stands to reason that in today's environment, the daily newspaper—that wonderful, crusty old beast, which I love with all my heart—would take a beating.
And so, as TCG has argued many times in the past, it all boils down to a battle of the screens. Which screen will prevail? It's hard to know for sure now, of course, but the key variable is that each successful player in this media environment has to have a screen. Hence the battle of the screens--TV vs. the Net, with some synthesis of the two destined to win.
Thus the challenge, and the opportunity: create the best screen, that can go anywhere, across all technological platforms (although, of course, all platforms will be digital, and digital can go anywhere.)
Recent history tells us, If you build it, they will come. The audiences, that is.
