Leo Laporte from Tech TV gave an excellent talk. He came from the MSM, from TV and radio. He speaks exclusively on technology. He started “This Week in Tech.” It was something they were doing anyway in phone calls with each other, talking about technology. The podcasts are these conversations recorded. This echoes what we’ve discussed at my work for getting podcasts from management, a capture of conversations they’d have anyway.
Their podcast is done by two people in a tiny office. They’re getting about $250K per year in advertising. That revenue is going up all the time. He shares the revenue with everyone he talks to on the podcast. He’s not a businessman, he doesn’t understand the business model, it just works.
The Wealth of Networks is recommended. In the MSM, there is a high barrier to entry and the conversation is all one way. The post-Vietnam generation disbelieves the MSM because they’re not very good at facts or selecting stories. It’s very expensive to run the MSM. It costs next to nothing to participate in the New Media. Furthermore, the audience is now global. In the MSM, the audience is only where you can get the signal or buy the newspaper.
The most important part of the New Media is that the conversation is two-way. It’s all about the conversation. Contrast this with the global emails from management at your work. There are more and more interesting forms of the New Media coming out. It makes a difference that we’re now getting a generation that grew up with it and are thinking of new things to do with it. The MSM sees the Internet as just another distribution channel for their broadcasts. They still don’t get the bidirectional nature of the medium.
He categorizes the world as straights and the hip. He wants to undermine the old media. He’s talking about our Blogger Underground where I work! Collaboration for the Masses, man!
Video is monkey media. It appeals to the primitive part of your brain. Blogging is really good for the cerebral cortex because it requires thinking. Podcasting and audio is more intimate. You’re living in their brain as you talk to them. Radio is very good at abstract concepts, but TV is not. Video frequently has images marginally related to the voice over. Imagine discussing WW I, but just showing an old tank rolling along.
The comments on YouTube are moronic compared to the comments on the blogs. Wow, is that true! I have to admit that I don’t understand how people talk back on podcasts. I guess it’s like radio talk shows, but since the conversations have to occur serially, it just doesn’t seem as thorough as the blogs. If you blog your podcast and take responses there, that would seem to work.
Podcasts are limited by the medium. His most popular podcast has 150K listeners and it doesn’t seem to go up. All podcasters hit some threshold. I would argue that the serial nature of the thing is the problem. I can have n browser windows open simultaneously and flip through all of them. When I listen to Hugh Hewitt’s podcast, I find I have to stop reading anything else and just sit and listen.
He partly blamed iTunes for the problem as well. It’s a chokepoint for the medium. He had nice things to say about the new Zune and was glad to see that Microsoft is doing podcasts as well. If everyone has a blog and everyone has a podcast, who is listening? Well, we all are. The book Linked was recommended as well. He discussed the meaning of the wisdom of that book and what the Long Tail is all about.
If you are an expert in woodworking, your goal should not be on CNN, it should be to be a hub in a network of woodworkers. The Long Tail is independent of scale. There is an overall long tail and then there is a long tail for woodworkers and then there is a long tail for African hardwood woodworkers. Then, by reaching out to other networks related o yours, you can draw them into your universe. That’s how the New Media is different.
He is convinced that in 20 years, the broadcast media will be old fashioned and out of date. The MSM is dead and/or dying. The New Media is in the community business, not the broadcast business.
Update: Patrysha over at My Name is not Herb has a well-reasoned rant on this subject. Check it out.
2 comments:
I disagree with the keynote speaker's assessment. Actually, gave me a nice rant for my own blog. I work in the radio industry and feel that his assessment of the death of radio (at least, I have no experience in television beyond watching it) is premature. To paraphrase Mark Twain "Reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated." I don't think someone who has been around a radio station lately would come to the same conclusion, at least not one who came to the station I work for. Thanks for the rant fodder though!
Patrysha, I agree with you. I'll pop over and read your rant in a moment. Personally, I read blogs and listen to the radio almost exclusively. I don't read newspapers or watch TV at all.
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