Day old news and game shows – why old media is screwed

March 25, 2008

Over the weekend, I did a couple of things that I don’t normally do – I bought a newspaper and I watched TV.

I was spending the weekend in the North East of England with friends; Mrs T was already in that neck of the woods because of some work stuff, so I cadged a lift with the friends that we’d be spending the weekend with. I can’t remember the last time I actually bought a newspaper, but thought I’d take full advantage of being driven around, and bought a copy of the Daily Telegraph to read along the way.

As I flicked through the pages, I realised I wasn’t actually reading any of the stories because pretty much everything I was looking at in today’s paper had already been covered in yesterday’s news feeds and blog posts. Oh well, at least the crossword kept me busy for an hour or so.

(Before I describe my next collision with old-media, I should point out that I don’t have TV, and haven’t had TV for about 4 years. I have a wall-screen for the Xbox360 and DVD player but don’t have a tuner or satellite dish for broadcast TV. As a result, watching TV is used to be something of a novelty)

In the evening, we had a couple of hours to kill in the hotel room before going out, so I switched on the TV. Being a Bank Holiday Friday, I was expecting to be overwhelmed with a choice of televisual treats, but instead I got game show (BBC1), game show (BBC2), game show (ITV), a repeat episode of The Simpsons (C4) and Airplane (Five) (yes, the almost-30-year-old-funny-the-first-time-not-so-much-now spoof about a chaotic plane journey). I didn’t even bother trying any of the satellite channels, opting, instead to grab my iPod and watch a couple of episodes of Mahalo Daily and Unwired, followed by a topping of Diggnation.

These two experiences got me thinking – the oldspaper distribution (I’m sorry – I just can’t bring myself to call them newspapers any more) model is doomed. There will always be an outlet for good journalistic writing, but it won’t be the printed daily paper. It might be a Kindle-esque model, like that adopted by the New York Times and the WSJ, but even then, it’s still akin to pushing a day-old square peg into an online, immediate round hole.

As for broadcast TV, based on Friday evening’s offerings, it appears to be doing a great job of screwing itself. I don’t know many qualifications it takes to be a TV schedule programmer, but it clearly doesn’t take any effort.

So there I was, an ABC1 demo, at prime viewing time a on a Friday evening – oldspaper consigned to the dustbin, unread; TV switched off; choosing, instead, to watch independently produced media on my iPod.

And why? Because old media isn’t providing me with any compelling reasons to stick around.

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