Posts Tagged digital signage
Up to 57 percent call taxi TV annoying
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on April 29th, 2010
Almost two-thirds of some demographic groups say TV in taxi cabs is neither informative nor entertaining, just annoying
It seems like every time you turn around, a captive-audience media company is touting a poll showing how much people love being made captive to audio-video content they haven't asked for and from which they can't escape. The polls invariably are conducted for a commission by audience-counting companies on behalf of the media company, a fact that isn't always mentioned in the press releases. It's disengenuous. But, more importantly, it makes clear that captive-audience media companies know that audience acceptance is their achilles' heel. Since they've invited themselves into people lives unasked, they have to prove to everyone that they're really welcomed guests. Certainly would-be advertisers don't want to know that the media is hated by the audience. That wouldn't sell much soda. Media companies are right to be insecure about whether people accept their captive-audience platforms. If I dropped into someone's house univited, I would be insecure about it, too. Earlier this week the Marist Institute of Public Opinion, a truly independent voice, released a poll showing 45 percent of New Yorkers on average nixing taxi TV as an annoyance and up to 57 percent of certain breakout groups nixing it. Among the correlations are education and income: the higher the education and income, the higher the percentage that find it annoying. In no demographic, and in no case whatsoever, do more than half the respondents say they're OK with it. If that's not a clear-cut indication that people don't like captive-audience media, I don't know what is, especially with the results coming from Marist, whose polls are highly regarded. The Marist reults are in line with what we found when we were researching our book on captive-audience media called Noise Wars. The media companies are paying for surveys that put lipstick on a pig. As far as this blog is concerned, it’s time they rethink their business plan to produce audio-video content in public places only for people who ask for it. With screen filters and directional audio, the technology is there for them to do it. If they keep annoying people, they shouldn’t be surprised when captive-audience media becomes another class of regulated activity. See the Marist results for yourself.
12,105 acts of protest against captive-audience media
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on April 5th, 2010
12 months, 12,000 views
We at Media by Choice have been unable to post in a while but we wanted to take a minute to recognize a milestone for our effort to raise awareness of what’s wrong with captive-audience media (TV and other audio and video media in places where we can’t escape it).
We launched the Media by Choice blog almost a year ago (April 19, 2009) and today, 88 posts later, we’ve attracted 12,105 views, or about 1,000 views a month, or 136 views per post on average.
We like to think of each view as an act of protest against captive-audience media. Of course, we know it’s not really like that. But one thing is clear: word is getting out. We now have other blogs linking to ours and, what’s more, people are finding the site through their searches. That tells us we’re attracting the readers we set out to attract.
And our book, Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy
Our posts on boom car noise continue to be the most heavily viewed. The most popular post of all time, with 2,665 views, is On noise, a judge who gets it, about a judge who threw the book at some men who retaliated against their neighbor for complaining about pumping their bass-heavy stereo all night. That post even generated back-and-forth commentary on Reddit, which we take as validation that the post struck a nerve.
Of more recent posts, a short piece we did on a Virginia Tech researcher who back-tracked and admitted that “TV on a stick” (billboards with TV) needs to be regulated before it becomes ubiquitous, attracted a lot of viewers. And it’s a personal favorite, too, because it captures the essence of how captive-audience media interests operate. First, they say we love their force-fed content and then they roll out research to support that. As we’ve said from the very beginning, getting surveys to support your point of view isn’t rocket science. Anyone can construct a survey instrument and set parameters on your universe of respondents to achieve the outcome you want.
In the Virginia Tech case, the researcher all but admitted that this is what happened. First, she was paid to develop research showing TV billboards are no more distracting than any other type of roadside media. She did that, but her research was rejected by the Transportation Research Board, a congressionally chartered research agency. Then she told the New York Times that she personally believes that TV billboards do cause more distraction and pose a safety hazard than conventional billboards. To us, this simply shows what we’ve contended all along, that when it comes to the research the captive-audience media touts, the emperor has no clothes. Put another way, digital out-of-home (DOOH) media are forcing highly distracting content down our throats, exploiting our involuntary attention, and holding up research they they design and commission to give them a fig leaf of validity to hide behind. Speaking for ourselves, we don’t buy it.
There’s simply no place for captive-audience media in our world. We live in a noisy, busy place and we need to be able to pick and choose when to consume audio-video media. It’s too distracting to have it forced on us. Although many people think this is a non-issue and that we ought to devote our time to ending hunger around the world, the fact is, as audio-video media continue to fill our public spaces, more people won’t find this a non-issue any longer; they will see it for what it is, the vehicle for a few people to commandeer our eyes and ears for their purposes, taking advantage of us when we can’t escape it.
DOOH Researcher: Digital Billboards Need Regulation
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on March 3rd, 2010
The captive-audience media industry in 2007 paid researchers at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to look at digital billboards—what some people call television on a stick—and found, unsurprisingly, that the billboards don’t pose a distracted-driver problem beyond that of any other type of billboard.
Critics of the billboards say the research was flawed and point to its rejection for publication by the Transportation Research Board, the congressionally chartered agency.
While the debate over the quality of the research will surely go on, what’s clear is that even the lead researcher on the project says regulation is needed for billboards that use flashing lights and quick movement to attract people’s attention.
“If we don’t . . . get on top of this right now while the capabilities are expanding, every roadway will be filled with flashing lights and video,” says the researcher, Suzanne Lee.
Lee is quoted in the March 3 New York Times in a major feature on the controversy over digital billboards, what we on this blog call captive-audience media.
We at Media by Choice have to pause and savor the irony: the Digital out-of-home (DOOH) media industry paid Lee to conduct her research and she did what she was paid to do: find that digital billboards are no more distracting than regular billboards. But now the researcher is telling journalists that, despite what her industry-paid research says, she believes the billboards do in fact up the distraction level.
From our point of view, there’s no mystery to this. Digital billboards exploit what scientists call our involuntary attention. Like TVs in places where we have no choice but to watch them—like in elevators or on buses—digital billboards use our involuntary attention not to protect us against big cats slinking through tall grass on the Serengeti but to hit us with audio-video content that no one has asked for yet isn’t allowed to escape.
Given the massive investment in money and other resources by media and other companies into captive-audience media, the growth of high-distraction platforms like digital billboards is like a big ship that simply can’t turn back. But as the researcher Suzanne Lee says, the time to look at and understand the impact this media has on us is now—while we’re still on the front end of this growth curb. What we mustn’t do is wait until so many tens of billions of dollars have been invested that no one is willing to say that this juggernaut of inescapable media has no clothes.
Out-of-home media and shotgun weddings
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on January 10th, 2010
Audience engagement is one of the subjects always under discussion among media people involved in digital out-of-home audio-video media, what we call captive-audience media in this blog because it involves intrusive content pushed out to people who haven’t asked for it.
Media executives typically tout studies they’ve commissioned showing how much their content engages people, and they deploy cool words like “trafficking,” “aggregation,” and “lifestage” in talking about out-of-home media.
I always get suspicious when companies use words like “media currency,” “thought leading,” and “psychographic” to talk about what they’re doing, because words like that are meant to obscure, not enlighten, kind of like the military using “vertical insertion” to talk about commandos parachuting behind enemy lives or “decommissioned aggressor quantum” to talk about dead enemy soldiers.
In their press releases and white papers, captive-audience media companies tout how much people notice and are engaged by their content. The “notice” part I can understand, because biologically we can’t help but notice moving pictures on a screen, especially when coupled with audio. Researchers say this media commands our “involuntary attention” in the same way that a leopard sneaking through the grass in the serengeti involuntarily attracts our attention when we’re out there hunting and gathering. Focusing on things that move and make noise around us has helped us survive as a species, and now it’s helping media companies launch platforms that attract advertisers.
The “engaged” part I’m not so sure about. Yes, I know there are impressive looking reports and stuff out there showing how much captive-audience TV networks like the one in Wal-Mart please us, but I’m just not sure “engaged” means the same thing to me as to a media executive who’s trying to convince advertisers that these plaforms are a good thing.
Here’s a quick quiz. Is the person below, who talks about buying flannel sheets at Wal-Mart, engaged?
“The Wal-Mart I went to has television screens hanging from the ceiling throughout the store. Every single one is playing commercials for items you can buy at Wal-Mart. They all have the sound turned on . . . . Even at the cash register, while still waiting on line, a flat screen TV pointed at the line played a different stream of commercials, conflicting with the nearby ceiling television. . . . I guess I get what I deserve for shopping there. These advertisements were in annoying places. (I did get a measure of revenge, however. While walking past the electronics department, I used my TV-B-Gone to turn off half a bank of televisions on display. It was unfortunate that my TV-B-Gone wouldn’t shut off any of the ceiling TVs.)”—Maria Langer
Maria has definitely noticed the TVs. But is she engaged?
How about this person?
“Those damn TVs are one of the biggest reasons I avoid going in [Wal-Mart]. The whole damn store is loud and makes me very irritable. . . . I’ll pay a couple extra cents for peace.” –ib
In my book, engagement occurs only when two parties mutually and willingly come together, as in an engagement for marriage.
Wal-Mart TV strikes me as invoving a different kind of engagement—the kind in which my girlfriend’s father is pointing a shotgun at me. I guess in this case I’ll enter into an engagement with her.
Wal-Mart’s free to do whatever it wants, of course. But there’s engagement and then there’s bludgeoning. When I turn on the TV at home and choose to watch a program, I’m engaged with the content; when I step into a Wal-Mart to buy flannel sheets and have my involuntary-attention button pushed, I’m bludgeoned by the content.
One industry analyst calls out-of-home media “imperative” media. In a report that mentions his remarks, “imperative” media is defined as media that garners and compels attention when presented at “points of intention.”
You could write an essay unpacking those terms, but the short of it is, in my opinion, the terms are gobbeldygook for media that pushes your involuntary-attention button. Industry supporters can talk in circles around the issue all they want, but all they’re really saying is, you’re going to consume this content whether you want to or not, and we’re going to couch it in business jargon to give the impression that somehow you’ve made a choice to consume it.
You go to Wal-Mart to buy flannel sheets, not watch TV commercials. The TV commercials are the price you pay to get the discount or the selection or the convenience or whatever else Wal-Mart offers, so your only choice is whether you’re willing to pay that price. If you choose not to pay that price, the opportunity cost falls on you to find some other place at which to buy your sheets.
I can’t speak for Maria, but I think there’s a good chance she’ll be willing to pay that opportunity cost to buy her flannel sheets somewhere else next time.
Note: Media by Choice has been online for 10 months now and has generated 11,270 views, or 1,127 views a month on average. The top two posts are On noise, a judge who gets it (2,661 views) and Boom cars: the constitutionality of nose thumbing (1,598 views). Thank you to all of our readers.
Media by Choice Thanks Rep. Eshoo on Noisy TV Bill
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity, Media noise on January 9th, 2010
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) is leading the way against captive-audience media by championing the successful House bill to curb loud TV commercials, Media by Choice says in a letter to Rep. Eshoo thanking her for her leadership on the issue.
“The practice of media companies to hit viewers over the head with loud commercials is part and parcel with their practice of locating TV and other audio-video media in places where people can’t escape it,” Media by Choice says in its letter on H.R. 1084, the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), sponsor of CALM Act
CALM passed the House last week and a similar bill is under consideration in the Senate. The bill directs the Federal Communicatons Commission to develop rules prohibiting media companies from broadcasting commercials at a volume louder than the accompanying programming.
Although TVs in the home is not a form of captive-audience media, because people choose when they watch TV, if at all, the practice of broadcasting commercials at a far higher volume than the accompanying programming has the effect of taking away people’s control of the media they consume and how they consume it.
By forcing people to turn down the volume or hit the mute button at commercial breaks, or else just put up with the intrusion, the media companies are exploiting technology to force-feed content to people, leaving them with only a negative choice: either block the content or try to tune it out.
Rep. Eshoo’s successful bill shows there’s a growing recognition of captive-audience media and a willingness to curb it.
“Your leadership on this issue has shown that our representatives in Congress can come together to curb the abusive use of media technology,” Media by Choice says in its letter. “I hope you’ll continue to lead as the practice of captive-audience media spreads throughout our environment.”
DOOH suffers from cognitive bias
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity, Media noise, TV Turnoff on December 4th, 2009
There is an entire field of study on cognitive biases in the way we see things, as individuals and as groups. “Bias blind spot,” “choice-supportive bias,” and “the base rate fallacy” are among the ways we reinforce what we believe and disregard what we don’t believe.
I believe the digital out-of-home media industry—the people who put TVs on trains, buses, subways, taxis, gas station pumps, elevators, office lobbies, and so on— is suffering from a big case of cognitive bias.
At conferences and in research reports, executives and consultants in the DOOH industry (as it’s called in some cases) claim that consumers like captive-audience media—that is, they like audio-video media they haven’t asked for in places where they can’t escape it.
As one executive at a recent conference says (as quoted in an industry report), “Studies consistently show that people do not mind—in fact, ‘invite’ media in out-of-home environments that stimulate them emotionally and intellectually.”
But I believe DOOH executives and consultants have spent too much time reading their own press releases. I have yet to talk to a single person who says they like TV in grocery stores, on gas pumps, in cabs, or in doctor’s offices. At most, they put up with the TV out of the belief that that kind of media is just part of the landscape now. What’s more, whenever consumers are quoted in newspapers and magazines on TVs in restaurants and other out-of-home settings, many of the quotes are typically about how irritating the TVs are. And those are just the polite comments printed in the story. When you read people’s online comments about captive-audience media, the quotes tend to have more exclamation points.
That said, I don’t doubt for a second that the studies being pointed to by DOOH industry people do in fact support their contention that we love being made captive to audio-video media. For a company or an industry to produce studies supporting what they want them to support is a time-honored tradition and something anyone who’s completed Statistics 101 can do. I recall two “studies” that came out within the last three months that show people liking TV in two different types of out-of-home settings (one a retail setting, the other a medical one). I put “studies” in quotes because they came from an independent firm that measures audience traffic but the studies were commissioned by the out-of-home media companies. Um, that means the media companies paid this independent company to “study” whether people like their product. Neither of the press releases that came out mentioned the fact that the studies were paid for. When I called the media contact on one of the press releases to confirm that the study was paid for, the contact threw back questions at me about whether I was media or not rather than just answer my question.
As it is, I have my own study on captive-audience media and after only one day the results show overwhelmingly that people dislike TV in public places.
The study isn’t objective, you say? Well, let’s look at this. The way I spread word about the survey was completely random. I simply tagged the blog page on StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, and Reddit. So I have no idea who will find the survey from those sites. I also tweeted about it, but I only have 40 followers, and some of them are just fronts for sites that sell Viagra, I think. There might even be a few DOOH people following me. I know the tweet was re-tweeted once, to a group that seems to have nothing to do with media of any kind. So, that seems pretty random.
Here are results of my survey so far:
* 75% say TV in public places is always or often an unwanted distraction
* 100% say the information on the TV neither helps nor enriches their life
* 100% say they would prefer to get information on specials at a grocery store on printed signs rather than in-house TV
* 75% say TV in public places makes it hard for them to read or think
* 100% say they’d rather read or think in a doctor’s waiting room than watch TV
* 100% say piped-in commercial radio on a publicly subsidized train is a violation of liberty and privacy rights
Those are the factual results from my survey one day after inviting people to voice their views. These results don’t match up with DOOH industry studies. If the different studies are equally factual, what can account for this divergence?
In the DOOH report referenced earlier, called Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) of Digital Signage the author of the report, an industry consultant, listed threats and weaknesses to the DOOH industry. The report does not list people’s dislike of captive-audience media as a threat. My own view is that, as captive-audience media spreads further, people will take notice and at some point many people will say that captive-audience media is going too far.
Do I suffer from cognitive bias? Listen, I’ve got the study to prove my contention.
Flanagan on Noise Wars: where’s the beef?
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity on September 23rd, 2009
And out-of-home TV consultant asks tough questions of book critical of his industry
For media professionals, there are probably few industries more exciting to be in right now than out-of-home TV. The technology is advancing, the advertisers are climbing on board, the networks are expanding. Anyone who’s on the top of their game in this industry is no doubt surveying this realm and finding it good—which makes it quixotic for anyone to step in front of this locomotive and ask the industry to become introspective for a moment, which is what I try to do with my book Noise Wars.
Out-of-home TV is based on a conceit that people who board a train or a bus or who go to a store to buy shoes welcomes a blaring TV, and that if they don’t, they can just ignore it. But many people don’t welcome it, they resent it, and they can’t ignore it. And what’s more, people today who don’t find out-of-home TV intrusive will find it intrusive tomorrow because at some point the industry will cross a line and start testing even the tolerance level of people who otherwise wouldn’t give it much thought.
With a message like that, it’s to be expected that anyone involved in the industry would dismiss the book as the tirade of a Luddite, yet industry consultant Paul Flanagan, who writes about the book on his blog Experiate, doesn’t do that. Although he’s an out-of-home TV professional who has helped develop projects for some impressive and admirable companies and organizations, he takes the concerns raised in the book seriously and tries to see things from the side of the critic.
“Mr. Freedman starts a compelling discussion on the use of media in society,” he says. “Clearly there is a problem here. . . . The book brings to light that our industry is not desired by everyone; there are many people and organizations that do not like media in society. This is important. We need to understand that for every action there is a reaction.”
Flanagan also acknowledges the black eye the industry is getting from out-of-home media companies that target children on school buses and in the classrooms, captive-audience settings that are simply indefensible.
But then he hits back hard against the limited empirical research in the book to support some of the claims made. How many people are not joining gyms because the TVs are intrusive? The book raises that question but doesn’t support it beyond a blog comment. When looking at boom cars (a topic addressed as a form of captive-audience media), the book fails to link research that’s mentioned to the affects of boom cars.
More importantly, the book relies too much on the blogosphere and not enough on quantifiable research on the impact of media on society. “[T]he execution may have been better suited to a research paper or critique,” he says.
Flanagan’s criticism is fair. Although the blogosphere today is too important to ignore, and the book’s use of it is appropriate, in my view, the book could do a better job linking the research that’s out there to the concerns over invasive media. Until a better job is done bringing the two together, I would agree the book can only serve as a starting point for discussion rather than a definitive report on the problem.
That said, the book tries to find a middle ground and discusses technological solutions to the problems that are raised. Among other things, the book talks about the role directional audio and screen filters in making environments comfortable for willing as well as unwilling audiences. I would have liked Flanagan to have talked about that, because here the book is doing more than expressing a problem; it’s expressing a solution as well.
Flanagan deserves credit for not only approaching the book with an open mind but for poking holes in my arguments in a fair and constructive way. I welcome his input.
His review, called “Noise Wars . . . or just noisy?” is posted on Amazon as well as on his blog.
Out-of-home TV: incivility institutionalized
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity, Media noise on September 19th, 2009
After Mayor Bloomberg announced his plan to ban smoking in parks and beaches, a New York Times reporter wondered around Central Park asking people what they would ban if they had the power. His report, called “Parkgoers suggest things New York could ban,” appeared yesterday.
Not surprisingly, most people wanted to ban noisy activities, but not just any noisy activities; people wanted to ban media noise: people talking on their cell phones, playing their car stereos too loudly, playing musical instruments too loudly.
We define media noise in this blog as noise that’s related to communication. Thus, drum playing is media noise, because music is communication, but highway traffic isn’t.
In fact, about three-quarters of all responses to the reporter, as well as the dozens of comments that the story generated online, involved media noise. The next biggest category was litter. Not surprising, and indeed, media noise has been described by noise activists as audio litter—that is, someone casting off their personal noise the way someone casts off the wrapper of a candy bar and leaves it on the ground without regard to the surrounding environment.
The reaction to the New York Times reporter is consistent with what we learned when we were researching our book, Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy
The Times piece made us think of the rise of digital signage, particularly out-of-home TV networks, because they’re premised on the same grand conceit of the person who disregards others and leaves his audio litter wherever he wants: that our shared environment is mine to pollute as I will and everyone else must either live with it or go somewhere else.
To be sure, the out-of-home TV network isn’t just some selfish person who’s so self-absorbed that he can’t think why others wouldn’t want to listen to his music. There is a difference between the two. In the latter case, the self-absorbed indifference to others is institutionalized.
Once every shoe store in the United States is plugged into an out-of-home TV network, we won’t be able to buy shoes without also having to watch TV. That will be great for the advertisers on the TV and the media company that owns the network, but for people who just want to buy shoes, it will be yet one more environment that will have to be endured.
That grand conceit of the polluter might be tolerable in a world where there are other places to go. But in world where there’s a boom car around every corner, an out-of-home TV in every restaurant, and a cell phone conversation on every seat next to you in the subway, that conceit is a luxury that will eventually be a target of resentment.
Take our survey
Is TV in public places good or bad? Let us know your thoughts in this Media by Choice survey on the good and the bad of TV in public places such as elevators, taxi cabs, subways, trains, buses, airport gates, doctor’s offices, office and hotel lobbies, and so on. Click here to take survey.
Lyle Bunn, others weigh in on Noise Wars
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity, Media noise on August 25th, 2009
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) media insiders talk about Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy
The digital signage blog Sixteen: Nine generated a little debate over captive-audience media and we’re hoping it will continue. Lyle Bunn, a widely-known digital signage consultant, says the concerns raised in our book on captive-audience media, Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy
Without a doubt Bunn, who is referenced in the book (he authored a white paper that the book mentions) is correct. It is in fact the case that for every technological advance there’s a push-back by some people. And so Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy
Bunn himself goes on to say that those on the cutting-edge of technology have always benefited from critics’ point of view because critics expose flaws with early execution. As he says about the book, “Thanks for the reminder… your points, vehemently made, which have been considered in every single project of this kind, will continue to help improve the process.”
That’s exactly what we hoped to accomplish when we set out to do the book, so we’re appreciative of Bunn’s comment.
Another commenter does a great job countering reactionary, uninformed comments about the book’s purpose. “It’s unwise to think one grasps the contents of a book without having read it. This book does not ‘rail against digital signage, etc.,’ but elucidates “the growing concern over our decreasing autonomy in choosing which media we consume willingly and that which is forced on us involuntarily.”
That is exactly the intent of the book. The commenter’s point is spot on.
You would in fact hope people would reserve judgment until they’ve actually read the book, because things are never as simple as they seem at first.
What’s encouraging, though, is that each of the industry supporters acknowledge, in at least a limited way, the validity of people’s concerns over captive-audience media.
Haynes, the author of the original blog post, says the book exposes what can happen when the content on these captive-audience platforms is bad. “There is a real message in here about content and strategy. One of the reasons people . . . don’t like some of these networks is that they offer no value in terms of the programming, and that programming is out of context with the environment or setting. The now-dead screens on commuter trains in my city offered ads and old TV news, and absolutely nothing about the basics, like which stop we were approaching or service disruptions. That really was just visual noise, and I can fully understand how people could grow to dislike those things.”
We would actually disagree with that point. Although good content is always better than bad content, the problem with out-of-home TV platforms is entirely separate from the quality of the content; the problem begins and ends with the fact that the content is dumped on people without giving them a chance to decide whether they want to be bothered by any content at all. The book talks about this issue at length. Matters of taste are accidental. One person’s good content is another person’s bad content. Content is irrelevant. It’s all about who decides when and where we consume content that everyone acknowledges is hard to ignore.
But the best comment of all, in our view, is the one by a reader of Haynes’ blog who says of industry people, ” You guys are too close to it. Some of what Freedman says is quite true. Audio [is] far more intrusive than video but on ANY level, I bet we’ll see sharply higher levels of resentment/anger over the next decade.”
That’s it in a nutshell.
Media insiders debate audience captivity
Posted by R. Freedman in Audience captivity, Media noise on August 22nd, 2009
In what we hope is the start of a far-reaching discussion on audience captivity within the media industry, Dave Haynes of Sixteen: Nine, a blog for digital signage professionals, has written a post about Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy
Right off the bat two people commented, and what’s admirable about the comments thus far is their fair-mindedness. Although there’s some dismissiveness in one of the comments, the other commenter went so far as to say, “You guys are too close to it. Some of what Freedman says is quite true. Audio [is] far more intrusive than video but on ANY level, I bet we’ll see sharply higher levels of resentment/anger over the next decade.”
That is an admirable position, not because the commenter is supporting the view of the book. He’s not. But it shows an openness to seeing the issue of audience captivity from a critic’s point. Media executive are too close to it. By all appearances they seem too caught up in the whiz-bang, isn’t-this-neat character of their cutting-edge technology without stepping back to see what impact this technology has on people.
No one would argue that having super-sharp, high-definition images and audio flashing eye-catching content to consumers on a street corner or in a bus is pretty neat. And in theory, you would think that flashy, engaging content would be an improvement to the drab ordinariness of a bus interior. But what often gets lost in the equation is the human element. The bus interior might be drab and ordinary, but by imposing hard-to-ignore content on people, you’re putting a roadblock between riders and their interior life, their ability to meander around in their thoughts as they will. Study after study shows people become stressed when noise—audio as well as visual noise—is imposed on them.
Media exectives and other industry supporters always have the same rejoinder to this argument: just ignore it. Tune it out. But audio-video media are compelling precisely because they can’t be tuned out easily. These media are not at all like print media, which people either decide to pay attention to or not. They make the choice.
Take this very blog post that you’re reading right now. You can read this post or dismiss it or ignore it. It’s your choice. But if I were to take the exact same content of this post and put it in an audio message that played outside your bedroom window at night, then the entire ball game changes, The different types of media are not at all the same.
It’s clear media executives and advertisers are transitioning from print content and ads to audio-video content and ads precisely because people can’t tune out the content, so to dismiss people’s concerns about the affect of captive-audience media is to fall into a tautological trap.
It’s heartening to see people in the digital signage industry taking a reasoned view of what we’re trying to say in Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy
