Tuesday, November 24, 2009

My Only Friend, the End

CBC Newsworld, hosted by Jian Ghomeshi has reported on 3 important questions to the media world: Is this the end of TV? Is this the end of radio? Is this the end of print? Recent trends prove that the internet seems to be re-shaping the way we watch TV and listen to music and how we get our news. These three videos dig deep into the question that scares many media conglomerates: Is this the END?

The End of Radio

Before we answer the question of the end of radio we must figure out where most viewers actually listen to the radio, the answer being THE CAR. Why would anyone want to listen to the radio outside the car when there are ihomes available? Even the audience who still listens to the radio in the car seems to be deceasing. This is because we have options! Today’s consumer driven market is all about choices. There are so many competitors in the music industry audiences don’t have to listen to music they don’t like or boring commercials when they can plug in their ipod or satellite radio and have all these options at their disposal. I am true hater of the radio and this is mostly because I had listening to radio ads. Why would I torture myself with the radio when I can pop in a CD that I burnt on itunes or even play my ipod in my car? Though I do learn about new songs and can listen to the news I still feel there are other ways that I can discover new music without the annoying ads.

The End of TV

Here is another example of how consumers like choices. We want the show we want to watch, when we want to watch it and where we want to watch it. Sitting and watching TV used to be a family event, but now who needs a family when you have wireless internet – just kidding... But seriously watching TV on TiVo or the internet is almost a way of our generation to fight the media conglomerates by saying you are going to need to find a new way to attracting us to the television. Media conglomerates make a ridiculous amount of money by using the audience as a commodity and selling us to advertisers. Now we are able to fast-forward these commercials or watch shows online. According to the video, “8 Billion dollars have been lost in advertising revenue as a result of PVR.” We can finally laugh at Disney instead of having them laugh at us...well maybe not to that extent but we can smile! We are still faced with advertising online but we can easily block out those ads instead of sitting for 5 minutes waiting for the commercials to end.

The End of Print

Do people actually still read newspapers anymore or are they just in it for the Sudoku on the back page? Maybe I’m bias but I have never been one to read a newspaper because I find the way the present news to be too sensationalised. I would only look to a newspaper to view the headlines and if the interest me I would search for the information on my favourite blog or on Google.

So is this really the end? I guess we will see.

Click here to watch the videos

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