Commentary: Internet Vs. Mass Media
Tuesday, May 30, 2006SUSIE GHARIB: Tonight`s commentator takes a look at the growing influence of the media. Here`s Robert X. Cringely, columnist for pbs.org.
ROBERT X. CRINGELY, COLUMNIST, PBS.ORG: Something significant is happening to world media and I blame the Internet. Ad sales, viewership and readership for television, magazines and newspapers are all trending down, yet two recent studies show that Internet growth is slowing, too. What`s happening here is the growth curve for communication technologies has a peculiar kink in it on the way to 100 percent market penetration. Television, radio, telephones, even electricity grew to about 70 percent market penetration and stalled until a generation shift made ubiquity possible. Each of these industries literally had to wait until their non- users died.
Well, today`s Internet mobiles don`t want a 20-year stagger step in their growth so they`re fooling us into seeing the Internet as something else, not something new but actually something old. So the Internet is now a telephone. It`s a television, a radio, a newspaper, a record store. And we`ll shortly access the net through familiar devices from all of those industries. And Internet growth will grow at the expense of those industries. Take cable TV for example, which will probably never grow past its current market penetration of just under 70 percent. That magic number, because it`s morphing into an IP network instead. This is the era of iTunes, iPod, IPTV, voiceover IP. It`s the Internet as described in 1996 only this time we really mean it and the broadcasting, movie, telephone and publishing industries know it. Mass media as we`ve known it for 60 years is dying to be replaced by a combination of high-dollar spectacle and citizen journalism. A billion channels, they`ll call it, but will there be anything to watch on TV? I`m Bob Cringely.
