Television isn't fast enough


We already knew that newspapers can't keep up. Looks like popular music shows face the same problem
What does it mean when television content is behind the curve?

Britain's "Top of the Pops," the world's longest-running weekly music show, will be declared extinct Sunday when it's broadcast for the last time on the BBC.

Two days later MTV, one reason for the demise of "Top of the Pops" and at the cutting edge of music for so long, begins to reinvent itself with a new interactive TV channel and Web site that will target the online social networking craze.

Young, Internet-literate listeners are not prepared to wait for a weekly digest of chart acts, and the preselected programming of 24-hour music channels is also losing its appeal in an age where music choice is greater than ever.

Television must compete with Robbie Williams beaming live images from a concert to fans' mobile phones and iPods playing downloaded tracks.

Wow. Content instead of presentation.

This last week I was telling some friends that I can't stand to watch television news anymore. It's too slow. In the time that it takes for them to give me a half hour of news, including commercials and stories I don't want, I can scan a couple of dozen news sites, do research on stories that leap out at me, watch part of a movie, maybe cue up a song or two, read a couple of daily web comix, answer some email, and still have time to make some tea.

And I am not all that young anymore. Some web surfers make me look positively antique.

It's not that we're not looking for content, it's that we don't like how it is presented.

For example, I am not a fan of professional sports. So I blip out anything about that.

If I see an interesting editorial or opinion piece, I go looking for an opposing view just to get a feel for things.

Content we want, it is the presentation and editing that is getting decentralized.

This blog is evidence enough of that.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - July 28, 2006 at 02:50 PM  Tag


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