The Future of Digital Media

As a journalism student, pseudo-Intellectual, and skirt-chasing guitarist, there were a period of years during which I became a cultural ex-patriot. I didn't abandon pizza and hamburgers or limit myself to speaking French, instead I lived without a TV.

I've never seen an episode of Melrose Place. Until 2005 I had never watched a single second of Beverly Hills 90210 or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A friend insisted that my cultural literacy was suffering for my entertainment isolation so I submitted to perhaps two episodes of 90210 and ultimately screened every episode of Buffy. I fear that the later may have impacted my IQ, (or at least my ability to remember words and do math) but a deep seated character flaw evidently draws me to half-hour suburban morality plays featuring monsters, magic and girl-power.

Flash forward to 2011. The way Americans consume media is in a state of constant transition. Options abound and no avoidance of any single media outlet can turn a person into an isolated cultural phenomenon. You can catch a trendy TV show on your couch, mobile phone, iPad, computer, etc.

When I avoided TV I increased my consumption of newspapers, magazines and books. I held the New York times in reverence and became disgusted with their adoption of color. I heralded the Dallas Morning News as the voice of the thinking middle class. And I read and metaphorically wiped my feet on the USA Today as spoon-sized pablum.

Years later, I really like the USA Today. It's well organized, succinct and relevant. The Times is an estranged friend that graces my door once in a great while. And I can't even remember the last time I saw the Dallas Morning News in a newsstand outside of Texas.

People get their news online. Newspapers are unable to sell enough physical units to justify the advertising dollars needed to keep their operations afloat. Some data suggests that ad dollars spent on the digital versions of print media are largely fruitless.

With the new found  popularity of E Readers like the Kindle and the Nook, all the data is suddenly null. Despite the changes in print we have already seen, more change is on the horizon.

By in large, Americans have long since abandoned the paradigm of a well-read, critical world view in favor of mindlessly adopting the sensational soundbite point-of-views espoused by twenty-four-hour news channel talking heads. To us, changes in TV are far more interesting.

So to hell with the Newspaper, long live the Television! Internet publishing has killed the American Newspaper. Can TV be far behind?

Counter-intuitive as it once seemed, subscription cable service has usurped free broadcast TV. Americans love their cable television.

Maybe it is the availability of programing which embraces more compelling subject matter and visual imagery prohibited for broadcast networks.

Perhaps consumers appreciate that small-budget channels can appeal to more finely focused demographics.

Most likely, people prefer 80 channels of crap to click through in hopes of finding something palatable. In short, Americans want choice.

But cable is now providing an alternative to its own one-size-fits-all programming bundles. Most cable services provide high-speed internet. Broadband has made streaming video a reality in many American homes.

With the advent of web enabled devices such as Apple TV, video game consoles, and a number of resent high-end TVs, people can have video on-demand either for free or for a small subscription fee.

Online streaming video services are nothing new. Broadband Internet access has finally permeated enough homes for hardware manufacturers to see the value of providing support for these services.

Gone are the days of yore when only the technologically elite could access these online treasure troves of film and TV with a purpose built Media Center PC stacked proudly amid the stereo, cable box, video game console, and DVD player. Now anyone that can set up a DVD player can watch online movies. And as a point of fact, in the digital media age “days of yore” refers to eight months to a year ago.

I'm the suburban nerd with the media center PC. I first embraced streaming video about two years ago when I bought my current home. While waiting for my cable to be installed I was able to utilize a local shopping mall food-court network from four blocks away. Arguably, it can't be steeling if the service is free? But for the sake of balance, there might have been a few coat hangers and a parabolic reflector involved in the enterprise, but I digress. I discovered it--I liked it.

Netflix is around 9 bucks per month and has access to virtually every TV or movie title available. If you can't stream it they'll mail you the film in a matter of days. Compare that with HBO's $17 per month or Showtime's $19.99 per month. But Netflix can provide consumers what they want when they want it much cheaper than conventional Cable On-Demand movies.

Hulu., Blockbuster, DailyMotion, iFilm and the ever popular YouTube, all provide video content. Some free and some pay services, these all offer content that consumers tailor to their own interests.

And in the end...

In the end it seems that TV is undergoing the ad budget pinch newspapers began feeling in the early 2000s.

With increased options people can watch exactly the TV they want to see. The intelligentsia will be more informed as they enjoy lectures, the remnants of world class journalism, documentaries and fine art film. The rabble will become more uninformed as they spend their evenings exposed to water-skiing squirrels and hobo wrestling.

Don't think, just because I look down my nose at our intellectual turpitude, I'm above any of it.

Am I watching political speeches, sociopolitical and anthropological reports, the Russian Ballet, symphonies? Uh, no. I watch cartoons. I watch House M.D. I watch The Dukes of Hazard: the Movie (a generally under appreciated piece of twenty-first-century film).

Danny Schecter recognized the dumbing down of America in his1998 book “The More You Watch, the Less You Know.” Ray Bradbury saw the writing on the wall in 1966 with “Fahrenheit 451.”

As media options diversify each individual will find it easier to follow his own micro-demographic curve. This seems to suggest that old ideas of cultural literacy will become fragmented as peoples interests are piqued in divergent directions and TV and Newspapers will no longer serve to homogenize our society.

Cyber-punk godfather William Gibson predicted the emergence of global online subcultures in the 1990s. In Egypt and Iran we have seen the impact of Twitter and other social media sites, as people who have never met coordinate nation-wide political demonstrations.

Either we're headed for Hell at full steam or we're altering the cultural geography of the world. Whether you subscribe to the dis-topic Bradbury or the not entirely dis-topic Gibson camp, the way we get our infotainment is changing.

Although a lot of it might be meaningless, there is digital media out there for every taste. How this impacts our culture is up to each individual. And that, my friends, should scare you.