This Week’s Insights: Why diversity is tough to achieve… What power do “media influencers” have, anyway?… Video piracy up as streaming services diversify… Will augmented reality be the new theatre normal?… Why small cities are making a comeback.
- Why Diversity Is Hard: Surveying the acres of white faces (and mostly greying or balding heads) in the West End, it is hardly surprising that theatres have traditionally deliberately catered to them. But what happens if you put on a show that doesn’t only speak to them? You might get a different sort of audience. Fine. But what if that work isn’t the work you want to do? Is diversity more important than vision? Or can the two serve each other?
- Media Influencers? What Exactly Does That Men? In the past few years, the term “influencer” has become virtually unavoidable. It’s been embraced by ad agencies (a recent study from the Association of National Advertisers found that 75 percent of companies use influencer marketing); adopted by retailers (fashion e-commerce site Revolve used the word 79 times in their IPO filing last month); welcomed into the lexicon of mainstream media (a Google search for “influencer” and “New York Times” yields nearly 3 million results); and cited so often by critics as an emblem of cultural decay, that it’s become a kind of shorthand for the perversions of late capitalism. But for a word so widely used, it’s surprisingly hard to grasp what it actually means.
- Video Piracy Is Up Again (After Years Of Decline). Here’s Why: Sandvine’s new Global Internet Phenomena report offers some interesting insight into user video habits and the internet, such as the fact that more than 50 percent of internet traffic is now encrypted, video now accounts for 58 percent of all global traffic, and Netflix alone now comprises 15 percent of all internet downstream data consumed. But there’s another interesting tidbit buried in the firm’s report: after years of steady decline, BitTorrent usage is once again growing. One major reason for BitTorrent’s rising popularity? Annoying exclusivity streaming deals. “More sources than ever are producing “exclusive” content available on a single streaming or broadcast service—think Game of Thrones for HBO, House of Cards for Netflix, The Handmaid’s Tale for Hulu, or Jack Ryan for Amazon. To get access to all of these services, it gets very expensive for a consumer, so they subscribe to one or two and pirate the rest.” The lesson? Make accessing content tougher, and people turn to piracy.
- The Future Of Live Theatre? Last week London’s National Theatre introduced “smart caption glasses” that display dialogue on the lenses as actors speak. The glasses can be used without charge for the play “War Horse” and for the musical “Hadestown,” and they will be available for all of the theater’s 2019 season. We’re so used to being able to access information instantly on our screens, increasingly some people want to be able to do so in real life. Beyond captions, there are possibilities to get more information as a performance plays in front of you. Could this be the new normal in a few years?
- Why Once-struggling Small Cities are Thriving: For years small cities lost population and stagnated economically. Now though, many small and midsize cities are revitalizing and residents are moving back. But why? The new reason: In an increasingly digital and global economy, talented and ambitious people have a choice. They no longer need to move to one of a few centers of power to pursue their life’s work. The old reason: Americans vote with their feet. We need livability. Affordability. Balance in our lives. Americans want to take big risks and dream about the future—but we want to succeed in places we can afford to fail. Responding to these forces, growing families and businesses are giving our mid-sized cities a big push into the 21st Century.
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