What is a media product?

“What is a product?” This question has a multitude of valid answers, but there is one that I find useful for thinking about new media: a product is a practice. By this I mean a socially-learned recurrent experience that can turn into a routine and a social reference point; something you learn to do from observing others and can refer to in conversation and be understood.

Television is a practice: it’s a habit, a routine, something you learn to do as a child, and can mention in conversation without having to explain what you mean. In a subtler way, TV channels are also practices: a phrase like "I’ve been watching ABC" has a distinctive meaning--but these practices presuppose the background, enabling practice of watching TV. Regular TV programmes are also practices, but one-offs are not, because practices need recurrence; otherwise we only have isolated experiences.

Similarly, the web as a whole is also a practice, as are popular aggregates (e.g. portals, news sites); but individual pieces of linear content (e.g. individual news reports) are not. This is the main reason why aggregates are so important in on-demand media: without popular aggregates, media brands find it difficult to establish consumer awareness--think of Reuters' current effort to establish itself as a consumer brand. This is because awareness is not a merely 'mental' matter and has to do with action, which only exists within practices.

Practices are crucial to brands, but the two are not the same. If a brand can appropriate a practice (perhaps because it created it--e.g. Hoover in the UK, or Xerox in the US), the brand gains a place in our social world. But not all brands achieve this, and not all practices are branded. Practices, unlike brands, are constitutive of human experience; they are not an invention of marketing.

This is relevant to on-demand media because the relevant practices (despite the current early versions) still have to be invented. We know what some of the features are, or rather what some of the missing features are: infinite space (i.e. no schedules), infinite choice, infinite plurality, etc. But this says little about what the practices, i.e. the learned behaviours will be. This is not just a matter of inventing the ‘product’ (the devices, the standards, the genres): that is only one half of the coin. The really important side is the practice itself: how video-on-demand will fit in everyday life, how and when it will be used, what role it will play in social life, etc. The two sides, of course, feed each other, and because of this it will take some time (say, 5-10 years) before things become clearer.

NB: the notion of social practices here is completely stolen from a bunch of authors - see this book for a good overview.

Comments

[will]

hey man, just to let you know you got your first subscriber on bloglines. good blog, i printed off a few entries to read - looks interesting. hattip to martin geddes from telepocalypse for pointing your site out!

[will]

hello, i wonder if you are EU based - have you looked at the upcoming review of the Television without Frontiers Directive?
The European Commission is attempting to regulate all forms of audiovisual online content (VOD etc); issues papers can be found http://europa.eu.int/comm/avpolicy/revision-tvwf2005/consult_en.htm
I would like to hear your opinion on their desire to attempt to regulate the online environment as a lot of what they hope to do seems to contradict with a lot of what you talk about being the key facets to on demand media.