Tech and Media Content Area
Current New Media
The Internet: The Internet can be seen as a distinct media sector, particularly since the high bandwidth video web has all the characteristics of a medium. The biggest disruption to watch is the search engine companies, who have found a new formula to combine media, from text through to video, and advertising. As a result, online advertising grew 30% last year, from $7.8 billion to $10.2 billion. This targeted advertising has much potential, which is why the stock price of the search engine companies are surging and old media companies’ stock prices are flagging. The progressive political community should fast follow too.
Political Opportunity: Being savvy on search and search optimization, or techniques to ensure your material gets favorable treatment in search, should be standard knowledge among progressives. Engage the blogs as a progressive asset.
Next Wave Media
Wireless Mobile Media: Mobile phones are huge for individual communication, but only now are becoming mediums in the common sense of the word. There are two reasons for this: one, phones are becoming wired to the Internet; by 2008, 90% of phones will be Internet-enabled. Second, right on the back of that low bandwidth effort, we are seeing broadband service that allows video. Many services, such as Verizon, can do so now, and you can see television on your two-inch screen. (About 700,000 could do this in 2004.) Within the next two years, two major efforts by wireless powerhouses (one of them being Qualcomm) are bringing broadcast video to cell phones. By 2009, an estimated 79 million phones will be able to receive broadband video.
Political Opportunity: Some political operative is going to crack the formula for an effective video ad that fits the 2x2 inch screen. It will happen within the next year or two.
Games: People who are not familiar with video and computer games are often surprised at how big a business the gaming industry is. In 2007, it was a $17.9 billion in the United States. The people who do it are not just teens anymore, but in fact those under 18 represent only 44% of all console gamers. Those over age 25 now constitute 60% of online PC gamers, dwarfing the kids. There is a robust advertising market beginning within the game worlds themselves. You can get advertising placed on billboards in virtual worlds that people drive by in their virtual cars. Other product placement can happen there as well.
Political Opportunity: This is virgin turf for any political group that wants to make inroads into a significant section of the population that is growing. The highly visual and engaging environments potentially make for very emotional connections. The gaming world is on the cutting edge of interactivity. It is a good place to learn 21st century media creation skills.
Traditional Media in Transition
Broadcast: Broadcast currently is struggling in an environment with many more targeted advertising options, particularly with more cable options. Without question, cable is the most efficient, effective advertising buy for business and political buyers alike. In fact there is an arbitrage moment in that media space right now. The broadcast ad rate is artificially high due to legacy habits from the old era. The new data shows that one can get better results putting money into ads on cable channels that are focused on a specific demographic group. It’s actually cheaper to do this as well—at least for now. However, by 2009, broadcast television is scheduled to migrate to digital signals. This will open up far more channels over the airwaves. Broadcast stations also are able to force carriage on local cable television systems, so these broadcast stations are still a valuable asset today and for years to come.
Political Opportunity: Although politicos should get weaned off their fixation with broadcast television, it still has a role to play. Politics, after all, is still about creating big majorities, so “broadcasting” to many people is still an effective strategy, more so that with most private sector businesses. Politics is the one business that still needs to appeal to at least half, if not all, of the population.
Cable: The cable industry, and that includes the airborne rival of satellite television, faces their biggest threat from the alternative video distribution of the Internet. Cable companies have a healthy business in providing broadband Internet hookups, so an even bigger threat is in the next big technological development of “WiMAX,” a form of wireless Internet that can travel miles—as much as 40 miles in line of site—not the 100 feet of the current form of “wifi.” Depending on who you listen to, this will arrive within a couple of years, which will make it easy to setup alternative broadband.
Political Opportunity: For the short term, political actors should still be very attracted to cable channels that reaches targeted audiences, both demographically and geographically. Americans still watch enormous amounts of television. African-Americans watch an average of 4 hours of TV each day, Latinos 3:23 hours, and whites 2:45. Even the young Millennials watch their share of television.
Radio: The old media stalwart of terrestrial radio has been hammered by recent technological innovations. The iPod undercut the need for music radio stations pumping out music to the young. Internet radio allows niche programming to move from anywhere to various specific audiences. And then satellite radio is siphoning off audience too. Yet radio still holds a vital place in the media universe. They provide the local content – even the weather, the traffic – that satellite and Internet radio options cannot provide.
Political Opportunity: There is still a political use for local radio, because, as we know, all politics is local. For some constituencies, like those in dispersed rural communities, radio still is the best way to connect.
Newspapers: Their civic function is to cover what’s happening now. Some might say the blogs are replacing newspapers with their form of coverage, but that coverage needs to be accurate and trusted. Whatever would replace newspapers must have the wherewithal to mount consistent, long-term efforts, and investigations to keep the entrenched powers of government and business honest and accountable. So far the bloggers are still figuring out the very beginnings of how to financially support themselves.
Political Opportunity: There is much promise in merging the best of newspapers and the best of citizen activated blogs. In fact, combined, they hold the promise of being even more effective public stewards than either one working alone.
Books: Their civic function is to lay out big ideas that are complex and need space to fully communicate. Books are still relatively healthy, and seem to be the preferable place for digesting complicated ideas rather than on a computer screen or other electronic form. But that may not be the case for younger generations rooted more in short bursts of information and ideas through the internet. It’s not at all clear about the long-term prospects for the book industry.
Political Opportunity: There seems to be a revival of sorts for short books in the pamphleteer tradition. These can get pushed at customers at the checkout lines of bookstores. Progressive books have done well in this form and this should be expanded.
