Predictions on media over next decade

As part of their series on ten years of Herald online, a number of media industry people look at the next ten years:

Bill Ralston – Media commentator, radio host
Everyone goes on about the death of traditional media, but the market’s a really interesting thing, it expands and contracts. Very seldom do you see one form kill off another. Everyone’s concentrating on digital – it’s slowly making more inroads into advertising. But it’s not going to kill papers, it won’t cut the throat of radio. TV didn’t kill radio or movies. They all changed and adapted. Everyone jostles around a bit, squeezes up together and continues to make a living.

I am a bit more pessimistic over print media. As Bill later says there are opportunities from this digital age, but I think advertising is going to move more and more online. In the US classified ads have almost died, and Trade Me has sluaghtered a lot of print advertising in NZ. Also online advertising can give advertisers so much more precise information – such as how many people saw an ad, clicked on it, what their demographic profile is etc etc.

Dr Martin Hirst – AUT associate professor, journalism curriculum leader
People talk about the death of newspapers all the time. I would think we have another ten years of newspapers. Journalism will continue in one form or another. I’m not sure if online media are a replacement for newspapers and TV and radio. Online media tends to be a replication of other media, a mirror or extension of their newspaper outlets, not a replacement. Whether this will continue in the future is debatable.

I certainly agree newspapers are still here in ten years. But in thirty? Not so sure.

John Campbell – Television presenter
The problem with television is that it’s expensive to make. We will see a preponderance of niche communications, something for everyone, whether you’re a macrobiotic vegan or Canterbury supporter. And where you’ll find it is online.

How can a construct of broadcasting, born of one channel, reinvent itself in an utterly fragmented market where people have so much choice? How do we survive within that market? That comes down to everyone’s ability to connect with an audience, an audience which has so much choice.

Very astute words from Mr Campbell. The market is fragmented and with PVRs, the emphasis is going on programmes not channels.

Copyright is another thing to consider – I could do a story at 7pm and it could be on YouTube five minutes later. How do we enforce that, do we want to worry about it, what do we do about it? As a rule of thumb I can’t take other people’s work and take it to air. YouTube rides roughshod over all those notions.

But it will also normally be on the TV3 site that evening also, so what is the problem? If it is lack of advertising revenue because it is on You Tube not TV3 site, I think one solution might be for TV channels to embed ads in their online content and stick it on You Tube themselves.

Eric Kearley – General manager, digital services, TVNZ
In the next ten years storage space on home devices is going to increase drastically, and bandwidth prices will decrease. These two in combination will see much more content available on demand.

Yes, yes, yes. You want to see episodes 1 to 6 of MASH, you just push the button and a minute later episode one at least is ready to go.