"The iPod Moment" for Newspapers Has Come and Gone

...while for TV & Movies, it is fast approaching, favoring the whip...

Over at BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis asks when the "iPod Moment" will arrive for the other media (newspapers, magazines, TV, etc.).  Well, since you asked ...

The iPod moment for newspapers and magazines came when bloggers arrived and started taking the power back.  There have been massive screeds written by prematurely triumphant bloggers high-fiving each other over their cleverness, ignoring the fact that without the newspapers, mags and AP feed, they would have nothing to write about.

And that fact was raised repeatedly by Old Media types, fussing about the insolence of the upstarts.

However, a curious thing happened this year.  The whole Justice Department firing prosecutors for political reasons story broke mainly because of the efforts of a disaggregated network of bloggers, researchers and lawyers. 

We're going to be seeing a lot more of that. All the way down to a granular level - where, for instance, the denizens of a place like HousingPANIC deputize themselves and do real investigative work into what controversial figures like disgraced Countrywide Mortgage CEO Angelo Mozilo are doing to try to muzzle their employees.

The moment for TV will come when the HDTVs of the future all come standard with hard disks and TiVO functionality built in. At that point, the whole ad revenue model (which is already on damn shaky ground - see what the wonks over at Ad Age have been saying here) basically collapses.  Interruptive advertising goes the way of the dodo, and all the stuff that is at this point experimental becomes the norm.

If there is anything that media can learn from the devastation wrought upon the music industry, it is that the condescending top-down information flow - that is, the media companies choose what you can see, hear & buy and the price at which you can do that - is a recipe for utter and complete disaster. 

Some of the brighter minds in the TV biz seem to have learned that.  Sadly, over in newspapers, the generation that grew up wanting to be played by Robert Redford in a movie is still stuck on their high horses and are refusing to come down and mingle with The Great Unwashed Masses that they claim to be serving & representing.



 

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