Archive for April, 2009
TV Turnoff advances, but goal line keeps moving
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity, TV Turnoff on April 25th, 2009
One of the reasons viruses are so hard to eradicate is they mutate constantly. You finally get the virus pegged only to see it mutate into a strain that your vaccine is powerless against.
That’s a little bit like what the Center for Screen-Time Awareness (CSTA) faces. The organization used to be called the TV Turnoff Network and it’s the group behind TV Turnoff Week, the twice-yearly campaign to get families to spend their evenings doing something other than watch TV for one week.
The campaign’s in its fifteenth year, and by many measures you can call it a success. People are generally familiar with TV Turnoff Week, and the number of public and private events that are held in conjunction with it has grown steadily. CSTA maintains a database organized by state listing some of these events.
Yet the problem of TV today is very different from what it was in 1993. As a report yesterday from KYW radio in Philadelphia says, TV is no longer the box in the living room that families gather around every night after dinner to watch. TV today is TV that you watch on your computer and your iPod or other smart handheld. In other words, we take our TV with us where ever we go, so “TV turnoff” has become more complicated.
What the KYW report didn’t get into is captive-audience TV. This is the use of TV in which people are forced to watch without regard to whether they want to or not. It’s one thing for me to stream my favorite TV show on my iPod so I can watch it on the bus; it’s another when I want to read or otherwise just relax on the bus but the TV blaring overhead makes that impossible.
In a sense, people have become too good at tuning out TV—or at least tuning out traditional TV. Network broadcasters have been suffering from shrinking audiences and ad revenue for years. It would be nice to say their problem is that people have gotten wise and are now doing other things besides watch TV. More likely, though, the drop in network viewers reflects people tapping alternative forms of TV—YouTube and the like—plus alternative forms of screen activity, video games and Web surfing.
We’re now seeing this shift become self-reinforcing. People become more used to getting information through video, so they’re reading less, so their reading skills become stunted, so they rely more on visual information, so their reading becomes yet more stunted, so they become ever more reliant on visual information, and thus you have a vicious circle.
It’s now just as common for new-hires to be given a DVD to watch rather than a manual to read. If you’re called to jury duty, you’re just as likely to be told to watch a 10-minute video on your duties as you are a handout to read.
We’re clearly in the beginning stages of a shift away from print media and to visual media. Public and private entities are racing to feature video on their Web sites while at the same time cutting back on their print material. The future is clear to see.
So TV Turnoff Week is a success but it can be hard to see because the definition of success keeps changing. TV is increasingly ubiquitous, so encouraging families to spend their evenings doing something other than watch TV has to be seen as just one phase of a multi-pronged effort, because excessive screen time is a multi-headed hydra.
New York Times reels, captive-audience media rises
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on April 22nd, 2009
The New York Times today (April 22) reported a $74.5 million quarterly loss. That’s not surprising news when you consider the body blow traditional journalism companies have sustained in the past year. The Internet has been driving readers away from traditional news media for a while now, and advertisers, hit by the economic slowdown along with everyone else, are pulling back.
It’s this kind of trend that has the Knight Foundation worried about the future of democracy (see yesterday’s post). If traditional media start going under at an even faster clip than they are today, what media outlets will fill the void?
Yet there’s one segment of the media industry that’s doing pretty well, and that’s captive-audience media. Clearly, advertisers like the idea that their message gets in front of an audience that has no choice but to hear what they have to say.
Just a few weeks before the New York Times announced its big quarterly revenue drop, a place-based media company called Ripple Media announced it had just received $4 million in venture capital funding. I’m not a businessman, so I don’t know how $4 million stacks up in the world of big business, but the fact that any company is getting money pumped into its coffers during our severe economic downturn strikes me as pretty impressive.
In early April there was another news brief, in Advertising Age, that said digital out-of-home growth is poised for big gains.
The contrast between what’s happening at the New York Times and what’s happening in out-of-home media (all of which is a form of captive-audience media, as we’re defining it in this blog) is significant. In traditional media, the audience goes to the media. (I pick up the New York Times or go to its Web site to get the news.) In out-of-home media, also known as place-based media, the media comes to the audience, whether the audience wants it ir not. (I ride the bus and the TV is playing overhead, or I go to buy shoes at a shoe store and an in-store TV network is broadcasting).
It makes sense why advertisers would like spending money when they know they have a captive audience. But if the present trend continues, and ad money keeps flowing out of traditional media and into captive-audience media, the shape of our world will look very different a few years down the road. No longer will we feel we’re in control of our media consumption, because so much of the media will come to us.
That’s not a future that looks good to some people. For anyone who dosen’t want to be constantly bombarded with unwanted TV and other intrusive media, it’s hard not to hope that there’s a sustainable business model for media companies that respect their audience enough to let their audience come to them rather than push their content onto people who haven’t asked for it.
Weigh in on Knight Foundation journalism report
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on April 21st, 2009
A report being drafted this week by a journalism think tank wants your opinion on the availability of objective news in your community. If you’re a critic of captive-audience media, this is an opportunity for you to make your voice heard. The report’s focus is on what type of journalism will fill the void once newspapers and other traditional media disappear. As we all know, the possibility that your home town newspaper won’t be around in a few years is hardly an outlandish idea . We’re seeing the closure or consolidation of venerable newspapers on a regular basis now. There’s probably less chance of your local TV station disappearing any time soon, but if it’s bought by a giant media conglomerate that’s more interested in getting corporate “synergies” than covering real news, who knows what the quality and depth of its local coverage will be?
The report is being prepared by a group within the Knight Foundation called the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. Its concern is with the continued availability of quality journalism–objective, investigative, public-service oriented–in communities when the economic model of traditional journalism no longer works. Its motivation is preservation of an informed citizenry. As it says in the summary to its draft report, “local journalistic institutions have traditionally served democracy by promoting values of openness, accountability, and public engagement…. ” It goes on to ask whether the availability of information at the community level in a new-media environment is sufficient to maintain the informed citizenry that’s vital to the health of a democracy.
The draft report is agnostic on what form media should take in the future. It sees both potential and peril in the growth of social and user generated media and other forms of new journalism. From a captive-audience standpoint, it’s crucial that journalism organizations not let their fear of an uniformed citizenry override their sense of what are appropriate delivery vehicles for news. If newspapers are going out of business, does that mean it’s good to see TVs introduced to our common areas like bus stops, street corners, subway platforms, and elevators?
The draft report doesn’t address this issue, but introducing TVs to common places that people gather would be a dubious way to ensure an informed citizenry. We shouldn’t pretend that bits and pieces of news from CNN broadcast over TVs in public areas will lead to informed citizens. Very few people today, including the most financially disadvantaged among us, don’t have access to TV in their home. The TV is a commodity that is available to everyone that wants one. There is no shortage of TVs in the home today, and there won’t be tomorrow. I hope the thoughtful people who are rightly wondering what journalism will look like tomorrow don’t lose sight of the big picture and start advocating for TVs in our common areas out of a misguided sense that people will miss out on news. If you feel the same way, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to give your input into the Knight Foundation’s draft report.
What this blog is all about
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on April 19th, 2009
President Barack Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush were kindred spirits in at least one unlikely way: they both at one time or another challenged Americans to spend time away from the TV. But what if the TV refuses to let you do that? I know that sounds wacky, but the emerging business model of media companies is to take the TV to where you are—on the street, at the gas station, on the subway—so that even if you agree with the presidential admonishment to turn off the TV you won’t have the freedom to do that. In the world unfolding in the action plans of media companies today, the TV is coming to you and you will have it in front of you whether you want it there or not.
This is a world that many people won’t mind living in—at least for a while. TV has always been a welcomed distraction to the business of living, so if you have a chance to catch a few minutes of programming when you’re putting gas in your car or riding the bus to work, what’s not to like?
But viewing TV everywhere as an interlude of entertainment throughout our day makes sense only in a world where TV isn’t everywhere. You can’t miss your brother-in-law if he’s moved into your house and raiding your refrigerator every night once you go to bed.
Even satisfied TV-watchers will at some point reach a limit to how much distraction they can take in their lives, and when they reach that point, they might very well find that there’s nothing they can do about the amount of TV they consume. They’re going to be entertained regardless of how full they are. Like a beggar at a banquet who’s eaten his fill and is now being force-fed roast chicken and potatoes, the bounty of unlimited food can quickly go from a blessing to a curse. You really can have your cake and eat it too as long as you’re willing to let others decide when and where you do your eating. TV everywhere is a Mephistophelean bargain.
To be sure, different people will reach their TV limit at different levels of saturation. For me it might be tomorrow, when TV is on the street corner, at the bus stop, and in the public restroom. For you it might be when it’s at the ATM, in a cab, on the vending machine for stamps, as well as on the gas pump and on the street corner.
Of course, the simple answer to living in a world of ubiquitous TV is simply to tune it out. We already live in a world saturated with print media, so what’s the big deal of adding TV to the mix? It’s not fair to prejudice one medium over another, in any case. So if it’s easy enough to tune out the visual noise of print ads, it should be easy enough to tune out the visual and audio noise of TV.
I suspect that our children will grow up doing just that, at least to a certain degree. Anyone who’s been born since, say, 1995, has never lived in a world without the constant buzzing, beeping, and flashing of ubiquitous digital media, so if anyone can live in a world of TV everywhere, our children are the ones to do it. Of course, we can ask whether they really are tuning it all out. After all, aren’t there a lot of drugs for hyperactivity and juvenile depression being prescribed today? Maybe there’s a connection. But be that as it may, we’re still left with the rest of us. Can we tune it all out?
I think it’s fair to say we can—to a point; TV is such a different kind of medium from print that to say we can tune out TV because we can tune out print is to disregard what makes these two media so different from one another. Indeed, it’s the very nature of these differences that makes TV everywhere so attractive to media companies. Media strategists don’t call people exposed to TV in buses and on elevators “captives” without a reason. No one would call me a captive to news content because I share the elevator with a copy of the Wall Street Journal, but that’s what I’m called when I share the elevator with a news program on TV or on the bus. What makes the media so different?
Well, I like this bedroom-clock analogy: imagine when, in the middle of the night, you want to find out the time. The “print-media” approach is simply to look at the clock and note the time. The “TV-media” approach is to have the clock at regular intervals broadcast the time to you (and whoever else is in your bed). Thus, every 15 minutes, say, the time is projected onto the ceiling of your bedroom accompanied by an audio announcement, “It is now 2:15 a.m.”
I know the example is absurd—who in their right mind would own a clock that at regular intervals broadcast the time, whether you want to know the time or not? Think of how disturbing that would be, not just to you but to whoever is sharing your bed. Clearly the most efficient, least intrusive—indeed, most respectful—way to have information about the time made available to you is the traditional way in which you take action to find it out.
Yet the “TV-media” approach is the way of the future, and that’s what this blog is about.
