Journalist Mark Glaser has an article up on the pbs.org MediaShift blog about the changing face of media in the 21st century. He talks about how both traditional media and new media must learn from each other, and merge the best practices. I like the point he makes about the techno-genie… once it’s out of the bottle, no one can put it back in. We’ve seen the same phenomena with all technological breakthroughs: TV, radio, Film, Nuclear weapons, cell phones, you name it.
No longer do people rely on TV Guide to program their lives around their favorite TV shows. Now they can use a digital video recorder or watch shows on-demand online and fit their TV watching into their lives. The people are taking control and watching, and listening to what they want when they want — and on the devices they want. And that goes for TV as well as radio and audio, with podcasts allowing people to listen on their own time and fast-forward or rewind shows at will.
What do we gain? We get more control of our lives and our media experience and we are no longer slaves to programmers. But what do we lose? We are losing shared experiences, where we all watch the same shows at the same time, or watch the same sporting events together. And our “water cooler” talk has a new etiquette, where we must tell people not to ruin our favorite shows because we’re taping it to watch later!