I often have occasion to write or speak about the new media and their effects on our culture, and I find myself repeating the same basic concepts over and over, sometimes fluently and sometimes fumblingly. For this reason, it occurred to me today to distill them into a soundbite:
The common culture is dead, and the middle class is busier than ever before. Consumers under forty–and, increasingly, under fifty–want what they want when they want it.
As a result, the old-fashioned mass-media model of top-down, one-size-fits-all journalism and entertainment is becoming obsolete. One-way broadcasting is out. Two-way narrowcasting is in.
That means online, on-demand media content transmitted directly to portable devices via user-friendly interactive interfaces that simultaneously maximize and simplify consumer choice and participation.
If you’re not already doing this, or figuring out how to do it, you’re asking for trouble.
I think that covers everything, don’t you?