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Happily Off-Topic: Science Dictates That It’s Time For A Brain Reset
It’s summer, meaning it’s time to take a little vacation from what we usually do. In fact, there’s scientific backing for the proposition that our brains – and particularly our creative brains – regularly need the reset that comes from vacation. When we get to the allegedly fully grown-up stage of life, it’s easy to ditch the need to take some time off for a mental reset because work is just too dang important. That’s a mistake.
Why Is Selling The Super Bowl Halftime Show An Awful Idea? It’s As Simple As 1-2-3.
There’s been a broad-based freakout in media circles the last couple days due to the NFL’s alleged plan to hock the rights to perform at halftime of the Super Bowl. I’ve been amazed at the negative feedback I’ve heard from my media friends. There is, after all, this little thing called capitalism.
That having been said, the NFL’s idea – if real – is colossally stupid. Why? It’s as simple as 1-2-3.
What? You Don’t Have A Clothing Line Yet?
Media convergence: it’s a trip through the looking glass for everyone and everything associated with entertainment and media, including advertisers.
So much about content has a funhouse mirror feel to it these days. What used to be important is becoming less and less so every day. Rushing into the vacuum that used to be filled by only the biggest entertainment players is…well…anyone with a great idea and the talent to communicate it.
You should take advantage of that trend. Now.
Fewer Jobs? Media Consolidation? Looks Like A Huge Opportunity For Talent!
Have you noticed how many “sportswriters” are ending up on-camera at ESPN? There’s a huge lesson in this for all media talent, no matter whether you come from television, radio, or print.
If you’re media talent and you feel like the number of available jobs is shrinking mightily, sadly, you’re right. Jobs are declining in electronic media and in print. A simple logic exercise: if demand for content is increasing (and it is) and the number of people being employed in content creation is decreasing, is there a fundamental disconnect happening?
The answer – shock! – is a blaringly loud YES! So, where’s the opportunity for you? Read on, friend.
Memo To Tribune, Gannett, Journal & Scripps: You’re Making A Huge Mistake!
If you owned the world’s greatest race car, would you take the engine, the suspension, and the drive train, put them in separate cars, and then hire different drivers – instead of the single, best driver – to race the newly separated cars? That’s what a huge slice of the media industry is doing right before our eyes.
Is Netflix Television? Is Pandora Radio? Who Cares!?!?!
Now is a good time to think about being a great creative, not about being a human labelmaker.
I’ve been posting a lot about what the era of media convergence means. It means opportunity. It means money. It means barriers to entry into the creative business are falling. It also means something else: pointless arguing over semantics. Those kinds of arguments are a typical part of rapid, massive change. That reality, however, makes them no less pointless and no less a distraction from the important issues at hand (the ones involving how we monetize creative content in the future).
Money: It’s Popping Up In All Sorts Of Places
One of the amazing things about the new entertainment and media world we’re now moving into – that thing I call The Jetsons Future – is that there are so many opportunities, ones that didn’t exist a handful of years ago, to be creative and make money. You don’t even need to know where to look. Why not? Because they’re everywhere! You just have to look at things a little differently than you used to and create your own opportunity.
When Rupert Murdoch Tells You Where The Money Is, Believe Him
Rupert Murdoch doesn’t do things unless he thinks they’re the best way to make as much money as possible. When you take together the two big pieces of Murdoch news this week, ask yourself this: in light of that $80 billion offer he made last month to buy Time Warner, what does it say that Fox has decided to unify its studio and television groups – y’know, the people that produce the content and the operation that broadcasts the content – into one group?
Harry Truman Knows How Quickly Media Convergence Will Arrive
Change is coming. Distribution of content via broadcast is being replaced by distribution of content via broadband. It’s an era of media convergence, when the barriers between traditional forms of media – television, film, radio, print – fall and we simply have “media”. It’s an era leading to what I like to call The Jetsons Future.
The Jetsons Future is loaded with new and exceptional opportunities, and we’re all going to be presented with lots of opportunities to fail as well as to succeed. Consequently, we’d better be prepared for change before it comes, and changing is coming. If you’re asking the simple one-word question, “When?” the answer is…possibly much faster than you imagine.
The Jetsons Future & The Era Of Media Convergence
To see the future of show business – really, of all business – you need to look to the future you’ve already seen. Surely you remember The Jetsons.
George, Jane, Judy, and Elroy had those massive video screens in every room of the house. They watched “television” on them. They made “phone calls” on them. They ordered dinner, did their banking, and pretty much did the majority of their life business via those screens. They even had smaller versions of them in their spacecars, on their wrists, and pretty much everywhere else they looked. How do you think they received the content that they watched on all those screens? Today, we call it broadband Internet, or in our spacecars – er, connected cars – wireless broadband.
We are moving from a world where content is delivered via broadcast to a world where content is delivered via broadband. Luckily, that can be a very good thing for you.
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