Traditional Media and the Internet
Wake up and smell the silicon!
by David Prichard, September 1995
Years ago, I heard the story of a man in a remote part of Ontario
who, when the radio was introduced, refused to believe anything
he heard on it until the newspaper was delivered several days
later.
It is with some irony that I observe this same sort of behaviour
with people who work in the traditional media when they comment
on the Internet. Recently, while visiting one of Toronto's major
newspapers, I overheard two journalists disparaging one of their
colleagues for being too fascinated by the cyber world. Yet this
same paper is about to set up its own Web site.
The Internet, or rather its descendant, marks a new medium that,
while drawing on traditional media, has a completely different
way of conveying information. And, as a consequence, an unknown
impact. I believe one of the effects of the Internet and the World
Wide Web will be the degrading of the importance of the media
middleman. If you look at the rush to get on the so-called Information
Highway, it is largely the technology-based companies, those that
provide the route, that are most heavily involved. Those that
actually provide information, by and large, are hanging back.
A writer for Wired recently
observed that for all intents and purposes, the CD-ROM was obsolete.
The future of multimedia was going to be the Net. Granted, there
will have to be technological improvements before this happens,
but it's safe to say -- based on recent history -- that these
changes should happen quite rapidly. At a recent lecture I attended,
the representatives from Netscape were of the conviction that
increased bandwidth is just around the corner.
Regardless of technical changes, the single most important concept
will be the ability of individuals to transmit multimedia information
the world over, be it a slick professional presentation or pictures
of the kids. The traditional media seem to think by ignoring or
downplaying the situation it may go away. Governments, on the
other hand, are quite concerned by this thought. Witness the infamous
Clipper chip and various Orwellian bills in the United States.
And then there was the rumour that Windows 95 was going to search
your hard drive for pirate software. Whether this is true or not
that, the fact it gained widespread acceptance says it all.
My belief is that the traditional media do not know what to make
of the Net and therein lies their difficulty. Existing media all
tend to see the Net as an extension of their particular medium
rather than focusing on its multimedia capability. This happens
whenever a new medium is introduced. It was sixty years after
the introduction of the printing press before an original work
was published.
The apprehension of the net by media is driven by several concerns:
Lack of understanding of the medium
The net is not a fad, but a forerunner of a new information conveyer.
It is, and will continue to, change at a frantic pace. This is
happening at a time when the traditional media are not prepared
to take chances in today's very competitive market, preferring
instead to utilize established formulas. You will have noticed
how many companies and media organizations that have an Internet
presence do not incorporate that information into their utilization
of other media. Why?
Loss of market share
A recent survey indicated television watching in North America
was down by half an hour a night. I know in my household that
it's much more than that now that we're on-line. The people who
did the survey speculated that viewers were down due to the fact
that people were working longer hours. This may be correct, but
I know for myself and my friends on the Net that we much prefer
surfing and other interactive Net activities to the passivity
of television. Recently, an acquaintance was marveling at the
ability to play a game on the Net with participants from all over
the globe. The ability to interact is what differentiates the
Net from traditional media. And it's what people want. Just look
at the explosive growth of talk radio and TV in North America.
The Internet releases the consumer from the passivity of traditional
media, which is a challenge traditional media need to meet in
order to maintain a presence in the long run.
Loss of income
Direct marketing has approximately a 3% positive return rate in
comparison to 12% on the Internet. But don't tell the ad agencies,
they might take the Net seriously and overly commercialize it!
The media rely on advertising to survive, and as advertisers come
to realize that people have the ability to search for and purchase
products on-line, revenue will be diverted to Internet resources.
The media organizations that will not survive are those that refuse
to acknowledge and incorporate the unique abilities of the Net.
The Net can and will co-exist with traditional media. Even if
the Net had not appeared, traditional media would have gone through
the current technical changes they are now embracing to remain
competitive. They need only integrate the Net in those changes
to survive. It's time to drag those McLuhan books out from the
back of the cupboard.
