It Killed the Newspapers

One thing I want to talk about from the NextMedia festival really comes from keynote speaker Alexander Manu.

"It was obvious that craiglist would kill the newspaper industry"

Maybe to Alexander. A brilliant business strategies, and one of the futurist of sorts, it begs the question why more people are ignoring these kinds of comments.

Why is it obvious that craigslist would kill newspaper? Take a moment to examine a newspaper - pretty things really, set up around ads. Paying for ads, classifieds, trying to get eyes to ads.

It's a bit of a pain being a journalist because the content is secondary in the newspaper world (Wait. There's a few other places like that), and as soon as someone figures out a way to offer it for free people will move to that form.

Not that people don't still read newspapers or anything. Just, y'know, readership and all that jazz being down.

One of the biggest points of Manu's keynote at NextMedia was "strategies 2.0".

But the biggest thing he made point to was that people do things... Because they Can.

The thing he used as example, fairly simple in a web 2.0 context:


A really simple home video that, as can be seen, started a phenomenon.

With remixes:


Remakes:


And even...cartoons:



And the question that most content creators get stuck on is always the why the frak are people doing this.

And the easiest answer, and the one that Manu hit was simple... because they can.

And this because they can is hard to access - it's not easy to monetize because no one knows when it'll happen.

TV is Not Dead, Kids

Proof of fact, kids are even still watching.

This was the marvel at NextMedia.

The theorized fall of the conventional TV infrastructure is not happening.

But, what is happening, and stats have been cropping up time and time again: that precocious 3-5 range? They play longer on the websites than they watch TV shows. So the eleven minute shows are great by themselves, but those websites better be top notch, and have fun stuff for the parents to look at because those kids are on the 'net for fourteen minutes plus playing games.

That's a long time for a pre-school kid to pay attention. I should know, my little sister's that age and although she'll watch Bolt three times in a row staying on the same website takes a bit of doing for her.

Unless there's ponies.

But I digress.

So not only have we not lost the new demos, the ad dollars seem to still be going to traditional media, but the amount of advert funding for the internet has gone up a bazillion per cent in the last four years.

Well, perhaps not that high, but the numbers were staggering. The increase to Internet ad revenue was over 100 per cent over the last few years, and seems to be on the increase.

Which means that these participatory styles, are on the rise, but definitely not in the way that seemed to be expected years ago.

And the issue that I saw time and time again, as a writer, was that there was no need for writers in this space. Which is a bit confusing - there's a distinct difference between writing a novel or a TV show - similarly, there's a difference between writing a game or a website, but the skills of a writer are still helpful for the creation of - in a crazy world like the internet - great, distinct story lines.

I'm not saying there aren't folks that can't do it all - and there's definitely a peak with the games that have been done, the interactive models that have been created.

but there's a point where, especially in relation to TV-Net creation - where having the writers (TV or otherwise) involved shouldn't be a eye-roll waiting to happen. The net is a different medium, video games are a different medium, sure, but some of the top grossing video games have brilliant story arcs (I'm looking at you Squenix) that are incredibly complex.

The issue is still funding models, which may be why a majority of new media fests continue to focus on it, while content creators continue to... well... create... and not get paid.

This disconnect needs to be examined.

- -

The Banff articles will be following the few from my personal NextMedia coverage.

It's in the Air, Kids

Let's check a scenario for a moment.

Writer 1: I have this crazy idea. It'll have giant robots. Then the robots turn into animals because they have to because they're damaged. It's so great. We could even use CG stuff.
Writer the second: Oh yeah. It was great. When they made it in the 90s.
Writer 1: Oh. I guess I should just drop it.

It's never easy to have to question ones ideas as being... done before at the beginning tenuous stages. I've dropped concepts because of this that later, I've revisited and realized it was nothing at all alike to the show I'd never heard of it or had seen a few times.

It's a balancing act of too close to the thing that was made and too far from something producible. A lot of that comes because there's such a huge history to television. A lot of it not even well known within the industry. The thing to keep in mind is that substituting, rejigs and genre bends that make the show suddenly an entirely new entity.

And, to expand on the in the air jive of things, there's at least ten concepts I've had ten or more writers give me, and, at the end of the day they're all different stories. And that's what makes us the sparkly snowflakes we are in our heads - those differences in how we create the "same" show, makes that writer's room the crazy, and amazing experience it is today.

I've been there. When you trip over an idea that just seems so right. So beautiful and amazing, but you can still do it. Sure there's some concepts that don't die (coming-of-age-tales I'm looking at you. Strongly), and there's some that didn't work two seasons ago that might, all of a sudden, find a platform. And then realize that someone else did it, but, y'know better because it went through the production machine and got destroyed and remade into something fit for human consumption.

If that didn't make sense, Rob Thomas wouldn't be re-making the same show. Sure the basic feel of the show is different, but the game is the same. And that's with the exact same writer.

Which just goes to show that a show made in the 90s that didn't really play is now up for grabs again. Full Circle.