A few weeks ago I discovered Terry Heaton's deeply insightful Pomo Blog, which I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the subjects I discuss here. Through occasional essays and frequent examples, Terry provides what to my knowledge is the best articulation of a notion that has been haunting media executives for some time.
Terry's notion is that of content 'unbundling', which in a nutshell refers to the ways in which consumers are accessing individual units of content (movies, songs, music clips, news clips, etc) in isolation, without caring for --or without even being aware of-- the contexts in which media owners have published them. His key point is that users consume what they want, when and where they want it; and that those whose business models (e.g. television) rely on dictating what should be consumed, or when, or where, are fighting a loosing battle. This is just a poor summary of Terry's arguments; interested readers should read this essay.
There is much that is true and useful in this view, and media executives would be well advised to take it seriously. But, as those who are familiar with my blog will expect, I see some problems with this account. These are, first, that it treats the notion of 'what consumers want' uncritically; and second, that it treats 'content' in an abstract way, without consideration for the overall experiences that content enables.
To begin with the first point: I can accept that, armed with new technologies, consumers are becoming less patient with media that won't give them what they want, when they want it. But this assumes that there is something that consumers want in the first place, which leads to the question of how they first learn that a given piece of content exists. As I argued in my (admittedly obscure) first post, this initial awareness is generally triggered by the consumption of 'aggregates': trusted, authored, always-changing forms of content whose main role is to link to further content; they act as destinations and are consumed with an open mind, without any desire other than to know 'what's on'. Examples include newspapers, TV channels, web portals, and, yes, RSS feeds. More diluted (but no less important) cases include all the links (whether 'hyper' or not) by which a piece of content refers to another: advertisements on web pages or TV channels, links in essays, references in articles, albums or books in critics' reviews, etc. Mentions in informal conversations are also examples, but these are usually preceded by a media-based aggregate. Aggregates, unlike linear content like movies or songs, rely on habit: users go to them as a matter of routine. (There are, admittedly, some cases that this account has trouble dealing with, including search and purely viral marketing--if the latter exists at all).
Aggregates have a social role. They are not just handy ways of getting to desirable content; they are also social currency. We read newspapers not just to know about events, but also to know what everybody else is reading (i.e. to be 'an informed member of society'); we read trade publications not only to know useful facts but also to be 'in the loop' about an industry; teenage girls read Seventeen largely because their friends do. Terry's argument sees the role of community as limited to buzz--e.g. sending URLs to friends--which is an important but limited account of the social aspects of content consumption.
As to the second point: In the web at least, consumers rarely start their journey with a clear notion of what they want (although that is certainly the case when they search for something they saw on TV or heard from a friend, which are important scenarios). Often, they 'surf' through aggregates before arriving at any form of linear content (i.e. content whose primary purpose it not to link to more content). And when they eventually do get to some linear content, this tends to be short; successful text and video formats on the web only take a few minutes to consume, after which users move on. Terry mentions Comedy Central's Motherload as a case of unbundled content, which is actually the opposite: it, just like MTV's Overdrive, Nickelodeon's Turbonick, and the video players by CNN and CBS (to name just a few) is just a new form of aggregate.
What users consume, and what is the real content, is the overall experience, one that includes some clips, some menus, some text pages, etc. It is this fact that content owners need to acknowledge (and are acknowledging). Content is just part of the media experience; it is an enabler. Nobody will want an experience devoid of good content; but, conversely, good content without a satisfying, habitual experience won't do either. I may be able to go to BitTorrent, download the latest episode of Lost, wait a few hours and watch it in my laptop, alone--but that is hardly good television.
Terry is right when he says that today's consumers have more of a say in the overall experience they consume (because the experience is an interactive one, and because nobody can force a consumer to stay in one web property); that when consumers know what they want (and want it badly enough) they will just get it; and that in a world of extreme fragmentation the loud voices of mainstream media will become softer.
But none of this is to say that the broadcast model of giving audiences a short list of recommended options within a compelling social experience will disappear. It is to say that media will have to adapt: linear, non-inteactive media will have to focus on what it does best, which is providing socially-shared compelling experiences, and not just delivering content--which audiences can get in other ways. On-demand media will need to learn (and is learning) that their audiences are not just search-engine addicts in search of content or information, but social beings in search of identity and a good time.
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