I tend now to watch only either PBS (Channel 9 - Public Broadcasting), A&E (Arts and Entertainment) or TLC (The Learning Channel), and then mostly for the informative programs. Some of this shift in focus is due to my demanding job delivering the new medium WWW (World Wide Web) to those lucky enough to belong to the burgeoning ranks of Cyberspace. The rest of the shift is from recognizing that the Television paradigm is no longer the best for providing either information or entertainment.
The program I watched on Saturday while a computer I was fixing was doing some disk copying was on A&E. This was the "Secrets of Technology" series, and was a fascinating look into how the "Future" has been portrayed in the past and is portrayed now. There were exerpts from various world fairs, advertisements and shows from the past. The theme that this show was pointing out in all of these examples of industrial prognostication was that all of the various portrayals put the consumer in the position of being handed the future by the manufacturing firms and their Research and Development departments. The contention was that the lowly consumer didn't have any say in what the future would look like, but instead that the future was sold to them by the marketing departments of the corporations.
Many of the images simply showed the consumer using what were really not very much changed products in settings such as desert farm colonies, undersea cities, and space colonies. The settings were futuristic but the products were not; they were mostly just cosmetically altered.
"What does this have to do with the Internet?" you might ask.
The Internet is the first widely available commercial and entertainment medium which has immediate, costless (almost) and easily documented consumer feedback to providers. If there is another medium that has in the past satisfied this criteria I don't know about it.
Printed words, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, brochures; all require initiative on the consumer's part to provide feedback. Even prepaid reply cards don't get much response in relation to the number that are sent out.
Television and Radio must resort to statistical sampling of random audiences. The number of consumer initiated responses either via mail or phone (or fax now) has been infinitesimal compared to the audience, and is largely limited to issues of high profile.
Telephone and Fax sales initiatives have met with high consumer resistance regardless of the product. They are not really consumer entertainment media anyway (I ignore the phone-sex lines as an altogether different entity.)
All of these must gauge consumer acceptance by statistical means from small samples - and the key word here is acceptance. So little active feedback comes from consumers on these media because the effort to give the feedback far outweighs the probable benefit of it. Companies have been racking their marketing brains trying to get consumers to provide them consistent feedback about what they buy, how often, and where. The latest gimmicks are the premium point cards such as Club-Z and Air-Miles etc. These offer the consumer a permium for giving the sellers accurate if not complete information about a their buying habits. That's not what the consumer is told mind you, but that's what these cards are doing.
All of this is so that the marketing types can predict what is going to sell, for how much, and when - all in aid of turning over inventory faster and building only enough product to fulfill the need, and of course maximizing profits. There's nothing wrong with this really. The industrial world has been working in this direction for over a hundred years. It actually benefits the consumer in many ways because keeping costs down can help lower consumer costs - this has been the general effect of mass production.
The problem is still that the consumer is only offered the products that the marketing types think will sell. There is no dialogue between consumers and producers about what the consumer thinks should be produced. Sure there are such things as focus groups and such to come up with ideas and feedback, but the general consumer isn't motivated very often to provide unsolicited comment.
I expect that the consumer's ability to provide immediate targeted feedback on the offerings of the Data Super Highway will mean a lot to companies that listen. It won't just be a case of putting up with the stuff presented because there is no choice - as it is now. The consumer will vote with their mouse/pointer by selecting what they want to see and experience. With the tremendously varied amount of offerings by people of similar likes and ideas provided even now on the Web, the consumer of tomorrow won't put up with any amount of patronizing brainless pap as they seem to do now. This technology can do so much towards broadening the viewer's options and empowering them into the decision loop for content and product.
The wrap up of the earlier mentioned TV program was:
" The individual has an enormous expertise in using technology in new and better ways. "richard@wimsey.com
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