The digitization of various technologies has created the possibilities to produce your own content more and more. And we even have the platforms to publish our content en share it with the world. In that sense something has changed in the traditional relationship between broadcaster and receiver. Increasingly we have gained access to the channels to say something back through the use of these new media technologies. But access to the production capabilities doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve gained access to the audience.
Broadcasters might find it increasingly difficult to deal with this stream of feedback. It means that they’ve lost control of the message. Media effects and influence doesn’t operate in the same ways it used to work before. So, yes, there has been a shift in control. A shift that seems to occur not only in the media, but on more levels in society. But I guess, those traditional broadcasters still have the power. Every message needs an audience to gain an effect and to reach an audience. And although we can keep saying that millions of people visit YouTube each day, their attention is primarily scattered over as much individual pieces of content resulting in a fragmented audience with no power at all. The voices are out there, they’re just not being heard. If everybody can be a star, what’s the real meaning of being a star?
And above all: the stuff that we as consumers are producing seems to be meaningless. What is it that we’re trying to achieve? What do we want to gain by publishing our daily musings on the net? By looking at the all time high list on YouTube, one can wonder if we are trying to use our ’so called power’ at all. Maybe, it has been a fight to be freed of the boundaries that once dominated the media industry. Those have been broken. Do we want to take a next step and get the power as well, then we need to know what it is we’re trying to achieve first.
i some trouble with what you say. not the observations but the reasoning behind it. but i don’t understand exactly why. i think what we see is the loss of control and a retention and/or shift to influence.
you used ‘access to the audience’. this phrase deserves some scrutiny because what we are seeing now might have other interesting aspects to it. we see that large audiences are hard (expensive) to capture. but we see that everywhere, also in television. but television is such a habit that it will take a while until the ‘use’ the television is based on choice instead of habit.
for entertainment some form of professional production is beneficial. it is nice to see a film in a theatre. it is also nice to watch a series like CSI (never saw it but i would be a regular/fan if i could) because of the suspense and storytelling. but this is not control. this is influence. and the effort spent on production will be higher if the rewards can be reaped. traditional media ecosystem is a proven system for making (and spending) money.
so if we say we are empowered it doesn’t mean we have ‘access to the audience’. it is more quantum, it is more a potentiality. your story can be published somewhere in some form. it is accessible to everyone with internet access. and some people (probably friends) will consume it. but only if the ‘entertainment’ value is high enough will it find its way to larger audiences. is power the guarantee to be heard or is it the possibility to be found?
as influence is much harder to maintain the broadcasters (or the producers) are going to look for control again, eventually. will they ever find it? i have no idea. they probably will but not entirely anymore. an example of getting control back might be to use gaming to convey messages. gaming is already used to convey commercial messages, but when are we going to see it used for ‘propaganda’?
I believe commercials will be fully integrated within the entertainment content in the form of sponsorship and ( honest ) product placement.
YouTube-type content will continue to exist as a kind of individual outlet for expression. Kind of like a video version of Twitter. It will have to attach itself to any kind of program where the user’s preferences are profiled. The same goes for any kind of “badly produced” entertainment or video expression (concert footage etc.)
Professional video production will continue to be the major player in the inevitable existence of passive media. And will ino doubt include the “familiar” genres such as detective stories, medical dramas etc …