| Now, is my message that a new technology
is going to supplant an old technology? No. That’s not what the history
of the development of technologies and their introduction tells us. But
that doesn’t mean there won’t be competition for audience attention and
time and resources. I believe, there will be, and there will be, as there
has been with the introduction of cable television, an erosion of network
share, [which fell] from not so many years ago from in the 90-95 percent
area, now around 50 percent of the way the audience invests its time.
Because exceptional talent and programming
are always scarce commodities, some content producers are going to benefit
from this trend; in fact, as we meet here in New Orleans, I know from personal
conversations in recent months that new companies are being formed and
that substantial venture capital is committing to create new audio, video,
and hybrid content for the internet and for direct broadcast satellite.
Some of these companies will form partnerships
with public radio and television to gain access to content brands and to
loyal audiences. Others will simply offer more money for talent and programming
than producers can resist, and they’ll hire them away. Still others will
seek to duplicate our program concepts and compete head-to-head for our
listeners and viewers. These people aren’t stupid, they see that the 22
million people who make up the universe of public radio listeners for both
information and music and cultural programming are exactly the audience
they want, and they’re going to come after ‘em.
A recent issue of the New
York Times Arts and Leisure section, it was Sunday, January 16, if
you want to look it up on their web site, captures the flavor of things
to come in two lengthy pieces: “The Web Catches and Reshapes Radio” and
“Television and the Net Converge.” In the first, Clea Simon writes, “Radio,
by its nature, has been limited by space, or distance from a tower or transmitter,
and by time, since traditional stations present shows in sequence.” Further,
in describing changes in how web radio will be accessed by ordinary consumers,
Simon adds, “The ideal is something very like the familiar kitchen or bedside
radio, a small, inexpensive receiver that does not have to be directly
connected to a modem and that can find a place in any room in the house.
Media watchers predict that such devices will be widely available within
two years.” Not ten years, two years.
I was the guest of the Sony Corporation three
years ago in Japan for the one and only leave of absence I’ve ever been
granted in my public broadcasting career, and I went into the labs at Sony
over a period of about three months and met with some of their leading
engineers and research scientists and looked at the things they were modeling
in 1996 in their labs. And most of the things we’re talking about here
were being tested and prototyped in 1996. This is not any longer a major
technical challenge, this is a matter of consumer acceptance and of marketing
at this stage.
In describing recent developments in convergence
of television and the net, Rik Fairlie wrote in that same Times issue that
the “Drew Cam” episode of ABC’s “Drew Carey Show,” one I know everybody
saw, tallied 1.9 million clicks, a record for a web site event; and 277
thousand video segments were downloaded in just three hours. Moreover,
about 100,000 users visit espn.com during Monday night football games to
take part in instant polls and to butt heads in interactive games.
Next spring DreamWorks SKG and
Imagine
Entertainment will launch POP.com, a site that will transmit films,
animation, music videos, live events, and performance art, all with an
emphasis on comedy.
Fairlie concludes, “Whether TV and the web
develop together or separately, the possibilities are nothing short of
revolutionary.” And it seems clear that viewers who just a few years
ago chose between a limited number of channel options will now have many
interactive options vying for a share of their time and attention.
The third assumption I bring is that I believe
public radio and public television will be seriously if not fatally injured
during this period without a radical reorientation of mission and strategy.
Note the second part of that sentence: without a radical reorientation
of mission and strategy.
And last, unfortunately, I see few signs so
far that public radio or public television actually believe that they have
anything to worry about approaching anything like the seriousness of the
threat that I’m describing.
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38 Speakers
Created
3/29/2000
©1999
2000 Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio |
