Mike Minehan
In 2006, Time Magazine honoured the Person of the Year. It was You.
This award by Time was partly in recognition of the way YouTube has created a new broadcast medium that is free, organic and democratic. On other sites, amateur photographers compete with the paparazzi.
User-generated content is the buzzword and YouTube is the new global broadcast channel for the Y generation.
No longer do we just interact with content – we create it. We can project an avatar of ourselves into Second Life and interact with others in real time. This interaction is not merely for entertainment. Some companies now hold meetings in Second Life and orchestras perform there live.
Web 2.0 is an outpouring of creativity from the people formerly known as consumers. The portals are open and the people are pouring through. And they’re designing their own communication systems as they go.
Partly left behind in the rush are the old delivery systems. The new web is shaking the foundations of old media empires and are rattling the regulations that try to control the pathways.
New television services set to be introduced into Australia in 2008 are an example of new media and new regulations. These new services are commonly being called narrowcasting.
Under media reform changes passed by the Australian parliament in 2006, two new classes of television services will be available. Licence A provides up to 30 channels for in-home viewing on normal TV sets. However, these channels will not be able to provide conventional programming. Licence A can carry datacasting, narrowcasting or not-for profit community services.
License B allows for 30 more channels that could provide mobile services beamed to handheld devices.
The mobile market is the new holy grail of communication. Disney, Discovery, National Geograpic and the History Channel are racing to provide mobile content, usually in the form of short video clips for replay on mobile phones.
Consulting firm Bain & Co. estimates that in the USA, mobile content will grow from a $1.7 billion market to $16 billion over 10 years, with video making up more than a quarter of that (Washington Post, 17 July, 2006, pD01).
In May last year in the USA, 25 million people accessed news and other information from a mobile phone. We are living in a grid of connectivity, and we want to connect wherever we may be.
Television channels ABC (America) and HBO have launched services that allow mobile users to watch episodes of downloaded TV shows. Unlike other mobile services, this content is not published through a wireless carrier. Instead, it is offered directly to customers who use the phone’s web connection to navigate to the chosen site (Washington Post, 26 July, 2006, pDo4).
In September, 2007, “Thunder Road” became the first comic book released in the United States exclusively by way of cellphone. This was part of a lineup of mobile comic books offered by the Kansas City-based uClick (Associated Press, 11 Sept., 2007, pC09).
And there’s hope for readers who have moved on from comics. Several US companies are experimenting with providing printed material on mobile phones, including publisher Harper Collins, which announced this year that it will begin making available excerpts from new books on Apple’s iPhones.
But a problem in Australia could be the definition of narrowcasting. This is interpreted by the Australian government as being services for special interest groups, intended only for limited locations. These services would be provided during a limited period or to cover a special event, or because they provide programs of limited appeal.
The Australian Communication and Media Authority is urging potential applicants to submit detailed programming proposals so it can decide whether the service is allowable.
However, these narrowcasting guidelines are described as ‘Orwellian’ by Fairfax Media (The Australian, 14 May, 2007, p33). In the late 1990s, Fairfax was disadvantaged by a government decision to restrict datacasting, including video clips. It is quite conceivable that without such restrictions, the web site of a newspaper could provide clips of sporting highlights (instead of only text and photographs), movie previews and video interviews with newsmakers.
The restrictions on datacasting by newspapers was widely interpreted in Australia as yet another way in which the government attempted to please the big media owners by placing restrictions on competitors.
It could also be possible to speculate that the new government datacasting licenses are at least partly the result of lobbying by the powerful free to air broadcasters who sought to protect and nurse their already dwindling audiences.
But the most influential and forceful of Australia’s media moguls, Kerry Packer, died on Boxing Day 2005. The Colossus of Kerry passed on his media empire to his son, James. However, James has shown little interest in TV and the old media assets he inherited. James sold half of his family’s media empire to the British private equity giant, CVC, and he won government approval in September, 2007, to sell down a further 25 per cent.
The focus of James Packer has shifted away from media towards gaming. In 2006, 54 per cent of the profit controlled by the Packer media companies was from gaming (Sydney Morning Herald, 23 Aug., 2007, p1). In addition to existing gaming interests in Australia (casinos), James has borrowed a further $US1.75 billion to fund the first phase of its City of Dreams casino resort in Macau (Sydney Morning Herald, 7 Sept., 2007, p37).
This loosening of the family grip on traditional media could lead to less pressure on government from Packer family interests to protect these diminished assets.
The digital age is a deluge of information and entertainment, coming at us from many different directions. The big question is, how do you control it and how do you license it?
There are likely to be some exciting times ahead before the data settles.
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