The 10 New Capabilities of the Emerging 21st Century Media

All media sectors are in various stages of transition towards what might be considered the eventual form of 21st century media. There are at least 10 new capabilities that this new media opens up. All of these capabilities are available in some form right now, but they will become increasingly common in the next few years, and will be the norm in the next five to ten years.

Internet-enabled: All media will be on the Internet including, by the end of this decade, all motion media—this means TV, the mother of all political media. This is where about 60% of campaign money goes for thirty-second ads to mass audiences. Anyone in politics has to pay attention to this shift.

Targeted: The audiences will be targeted and niche. The positive side is that there will be more meaningful connections to different constituencies. Unfortunately for politicians, media consultancies are used to creating a few major commercials that go to almost everyone. That will have to change.

Efficient: Advertising will be more efficient and performance-based. The booming Google ad phenomenon will be brought into the video context in the coming years. This is good for advertisers and people who use advertising as it will provide more bang for your buck. On the negative side it could lead to the virtual collapse of 30-second ads that the political establishment depends on.

Consumer-Controlled: Consumers will have much more control over what they watch and read with mass adoption of TiVo and Digital Video Recorders. Advertisers will need to hook them, and hook them early, or find an alternative way to reach them by creating more compelling advertisements.

Time-shifted: All media products will be time-shifted; TiVo, again, is the predecessor. The good news is that if someone misses an ad they want they want to see, they can do it later. On the other hand time shifting will allow viewers to avoid commercials altogether.

Prodigious: All media will have more producers. This is a function of production and distribution costs going into free-fall as the computer industry continues to produce amazing cost efficiencies. This allows cheap production, but much greater competition. Content will need to stand out of the clutter in a pronounced way.

Bottom-up: The blogs are an early example of a new type of bottom-up content, having exploded to more than 40 million in just a few years. This is creating an immense amount of clutter way beyond the production coming out of the professional media universe. These bottom-up producers could become the new foot soldiers of political campaigns.

Collaborative: We are seeing new collaborative production capabilities in the next generation of Web 2.0 tools. The Internet is not just the receptacle of media, but a tool that allows vast networks of people to collaborate and produce material of greater scale and complexity. Collaborative tools also include the outsourcing tools that allow work between people in different countries.

Global: All media is potentially global. When you post something on the Internet designed for a domestic political audience, it is also instantaneously seen around the world. Another way to think of this is in terms of assets. Progressives could leverage the international community to gain help for new thinking on issues or approaches.

Emergent: The bottom-up, collaborative nature of the creation of content makes it “out of control.” You can’t predict what will happen—this is both scary and wonderful. It may make political actors uncomfortable, but those that master the emergent phenomena stand to benefit.