All The News That’s Fit To Print… Boston Version…
I was a child of television.
When I came home from school every day, I positioned myself in front of the TV for endless hours of viewing.
One of my favorite shows was Candid Camera.
Do you remember this one? Â With host Allan Funt.Â
The theme song still resonates in my head even today:
When it’s least expected
You’re elected, you’re the star today… Smile, you’re on Candid Camera.
The show went on for years. It was a big hit.
And in a strange way, its creator, Allan Funt, predated Youtube by nearly half a century. Â After all, one of the greatest appeals of Youtube is that it is ‘real’.
Allan Funt clearly ‘got it’.Â
How disappointing then to see that his son, writer and TV host Peter Funt does not get it at all. Not at all.
Peter writes in this week’s Boston Globe that the Internet is, in fact no different from cable. Â
As cable reached critical mass, its situation was strikingly similar to that of the Internet. It was primarily a delivery system, capable of transmitting content to places where it had not been available, and in volume – “shelf space’’ as cable programmers termed it – that seemed almost limitless.
No Peter.
No no no no no.
No.
The Internet is not just another kind of cable, but with more channels.
It is that kind of thinking that is going to destroy television, as it has already destroyed newspaper, including the one that you write for – and its parent company.
The web is not about delivering content to passive viewers.  The web is about everyone participating with everyone all the time.  Television (and newspapers for that matter) are about one person or one producer delivering his or her content to a sea of watchers or readers. Â
The web is about everyone putting everything into the mix all the time – and taking out as much as they put in.  It’s a constant, endless, living and ongoing dialogue  multilogue.
Broadcasters who treat the web as just another kind of cable, but with more channels are going to go out of business. Â Just as will newspaper publishers who think that the web is a way to deliver a printed newspaper, but without the paper.
If you want to get a sense of how the web works, look at the sites that work the best. Â Look at eBay. eBay is not a store that delivers things to sell to its customers – it’s a marketplace of junk – an endless stream in which everyone puts stuff in. The more people who put stuff in, the better the whole experience for everyone.
JDate is not a site where a few select girls go looking for a date. Â It’s a marketplace where everyone participates all the time – a giant, living, breathing, ongoing and perpetual marketplace for dates. And again, the more people who participate, the better the experience for everyone.
Wikipedia is not a linear encyclopedia where a sequestered room of scholars write up their information like Britannica used to. Â It’s also a marketplace of ideas. And the more people who participate, the better.
So what makes you think that television and entertainment are any different?
They aren’t.
The web changes the way things work. Â And you have to either conform to what the web does or you die.
It likes the random, the accidental, the unplanned.Â
Your father would have understood.
I think..
3 Comments
Michael Rosenblum November 05, 2009
Hi Peter
Thanks for responding.
One of the defining certainties of new technologies is that people try and make them work the way prior technologies did, because that is what they are familiar with. As a rule, these tend to be wrong.
When radio was first invented, the first purveyors (ATT in fact) tried to set it up like the phone system, because that was what they were familiar with. (Ever hear of Radio Telephony?). Even after they got it, they didn’t really get it. ATT later tried something called Toll Radio, where broadcasters paid by the minute to ‘use’ the radio network.
No, radio led to something very new and different – broadcasting. The web also leads to something new and different. The sooner places like The Globe ‘get’ that, the better off they will be.
Peter Funt November 05, 2009
Gosh, I did a poor job of making my point. In The Globe, I was primarily suggesting that Internet businesses, like The Globe, could learn a few things from the way cable-TV was successfully marketed 30 years ago. My reference to the Net being primarily a delivery system was some 10 years ago – as the Internet reached a critical mass, but before social networking was an important element. Things have changed. But the Internet still isn’t any one thing, or any one group. It has millions of “passive” viewers, as well as millions of interactive users…like the two of us.
Peter
steve November 05, 2009
funny you would pick up on this. i too read this yesterday but did not make the family connection.
not only was i shaking my head while i read this piece, i also read that the sf chron is being billed as “the first newspaper to be printed on high quality glossy paper” by its publisher.
who gives a rats(*)?