Same with radio. This will mean a huge shift of our habits in consuming media (radio, TV, cable and Internet). We’ll move from appointment-based broadcast media to “I’ll watch what I want when I want, produced by anyone I want.”
 | It’s like the Genie is out of the bottle and the |
For example, I’ve been listening to Internet radio for a year now. I have 500 channels and no advertisements at my desktop. I started recording 1- to 2-hour segments to put on my iPod for listening during long drives, or even short drives around town. I’m not turning on my car radio much anymore, not even NPR. I can get NPR as a podcast and listen to it WHEN I want to, instead of having to be near a radio when they broadcast the programs I’m interested in.
Frankly, I’m rather excited about all these changes, and I think advertisers will learn how to deliver less intrusive ways to sponsor programs. If they play their cards right, they’ll find ways to ride the wave of highly targeted, narrow-casted programs and match up their messages with those select groups in a supportive, informative manner. What they are doing now is driving people away. My ‘echo boomer’ kids completely tune out TV and radio ads. Well, truth is, they don’t watch TV or listen to the radio. They rent DVDs and listen to their iPods.
Adam L. Penenberg says this in his Wired News article, “Like It or Not, Blogs Have Legs” –
Case in point: Last week, BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis posted an essay by Chris Anderson on “exploding TV” that touts the idea that television as we know it will end in the next few years, supplanted by a whole new generation of searchable video, almost unlimited content on demand, stowing of journalists’ primary source material — interviews, documents — that never make it into their finished pieces, and the possibility of vlogging (video blogs).
In his essay, Anderson celebrated the breakdown of the old world economic order, to be replaced (potentially) by a new era of “open distribution” for any video content.
“This, like the smashing of distribution bottlenecks everywhere,” Anderson argues, “could shift consumer taste from hits to niches, creating a Long Tail of demand.” In other words, consumers would have access to any type of content they desired. Nothing would ever be out of print, because there would always be a market for it, no matter how small. Instead of Hollywood and the record industry deciding what we can buy, and neglecting to sell anything that doesn’t generate high enough returns, we the consumers would. If the Long Tail were to have a slogan, it might be democracy, disintermediation and corporate decay.
Jarvis also linked to snippets of related ideas presented by Fred Wilson, John Battelle, Mark Cuban, Jay Rosen and Steven Johnson, among others. Chris Anderson, editor in chief ofWired magazine, followed it with a post of his own, a continuation of a think piece entitled “The Long Tail” that he wrote forWired magazine, and which had kicked off this digital debate. (Note: Before anyone e-mails me with charges of a conflict of interest, note thatWired magazine and Wired News are wholly separate companies with different corporate owners.)
So, to put in my 2 cents’ worth on this topic, I’ve borrowed a rather long post from Chris Anderson’s blog. He’s writing a book on the Long Tail. I’ve talked about that in a previous post. Bottom line: There is life and profit in reselling and redistributing all kinds of media into specific niche markets using the Internet over a long period of time. Or, put another way, financial success in traditional media productions (TV shows, movies, books) from an oligarchy of exclusive publishers is not limited to only the best sellers in the first two months after they are released. We’re seeing a new story emerge. Read more about this in Chris Anderson’s blog and stay tuned for the book he’s writing on the topic.
Additionally I have a client that is about to capitalize on this Long Tail concept in a big way soon. So in my mind, Chris has really nailed the elements of this new trend, and I think much of what he says is already happening rapidly, right under the noses of Hollywood, radio and TV broadcasters who remain largerly paralyzed and mostly in denial as to how to proceed. We’ll see over time, of course, how all this pans out. But I remember the naysayers of the Internet not all that long ago.
But first, let’s crisp up what I mean by Long Tail TV. The definition of the Long Tail in this context is: “content that is not available through traditional distribution channels but could nevertheless find an audience.” For the most part, that’s niche content. It may not have been niche when it was made or niche everywhere but it counts as niche now where you live. This could include:
1) TV shows that are made but not broadcast in your area:
- Channels your cable provider doesn’t carry
- Foreign TV
- Local sports and events from places you aren’t
2) Old TV shows:
- TV from the archives, from ancient to relatively recent
- Current shows that you missed and forgot to record
3) Video of any sort that is made but not broadcast (the video found on the Internet Archive’s moving image collections, which ranges from the Prelinger Archives to SIGGRAPH animations, is a great example.)
- Independent films
- Commercials (which are broadcast but not scheduled and findable)
- Amateur video, including news
- Commercial/corporate video intended for targeted audiences
4) Video that could and would be made if only there were a good way to find an audience
for it. (Steve Rosenbaum is blogging on this, too.) The best sense of what that might be can be found by looking at the online video that’s been made since the broadband web became a reality.
- Political video mashups from MoveOn; skateboarders taping and distributing their stunts and spills; any number of witness videos; amateur porn; videogame machinima, etc…
- The sort of thing this article about JibJab Media (home of South Park-like fare such as “This Land“) celebrates. Such web video, the article says, is “spawning a cottage industry of digital movie Fellinis hoping to make their mark in the nascent world of online short films.”
- Endless numbers of reality shows
Finally, I’ll end by once again quoting
Thomas Hawk:If today I watch CSI Miami, but on my weekends go out hang-gliding and am a huge hang-gliding fan, when the California hang-gliding championships end up being broadcast through a microcontent platform, I will end up watching that instead of CSI.
If today I watch some network television but even more than my network television I love reading author Hunter S. Thompson, and my microcontent platform brings me a talk by Hunter S. Thompson from the University of Wyoming, I will end up watching that instead of CSI.
If I am 16 and my favorite band is not what hits the charts but rather the latest skate punk music thing, then the custom skate punk music shows that can easily be created and delivered to my microcontent platform will be much more interesting to me than American Idol.
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If you want to know more, visit Chris Anderson’s blog on the Long Tail to follow his development of these concepts. He’s written a lot in this area and does it well.
If your business creates media or uses standard media advertising on radio or TV, then you need to start looking ahead at more creative ways to use your advertising dollars. If your radio and/or TV ads aren’t pulling in the leads you want, you might ask yourself, “Are people really listening to the same old appointment-based shows anymore, or are they listening to podcasts and media being distributed by companies focused on products in the Long Tail that are more tailored to their personal interests?” You might be told differently by radio or TV stations, so beware. Do you own research. All this is rocking their boat and impacting their income and slipping up on them faster than they may be willing to admit (or even know).
Further reading – if this is all a bit new for you, let me suggest taking a step back. Get a copy of Media Virus – Revised Edition by Douglas Rushkoff. Here’s a quote from the beginning of his book: “The average American home has more media-gathering technology than a state-of-the-art newsroom did 10 years ago.”
