I HATE to say I told you so, but, well, I told you so, heh.
We have a spate of stories today on the transition from traditional media, such as newspapers and TV, to online media. Here’s an excerpt from “Digital, video downloads to be morning paper of the future.”
WASHINGTON — Reading your newspaper over a steaming cup of coffee will be a thing of the past in years to come as video and digital technology replace the print media of today, experts say.
“We know that broadband digital networks will be widespread and broadband wireless too,” said Andrew Nachison, president of Ifocos, a media think tank.
Nachison predicted that podcasts, or video messaging, as well as blogs, books and Internet sites will become accessible via wireless and mobile video services as the technology evolves.
Meanwhile, TV (the boob tube or noob tube?) will also have to face the challenge of online video and may lose its traditional place of honor (or dishonor, as the case may be). Here’s an excerpt from the Agence France-Presse story.
“In a couple of years, we’ll be seeing television (change) from being a dedicated box to being part of a home network, connected, eliminating all the wires,” said Tim Hanlon, senior vice-president of media consultants Denuo.
“It’s a cross-line between Internet and TV experience.”
Devices such as the brand-new Apple TV, launched on March 21, and the company TiVo’s decoder and recorder, allow films and programs to be downloaded from the Internet for direct viewing on a television screen.
“I could watch Internet video on a TV, and reverse,” Hanlon said. “And you could receive a multitude of content from online stores.”
Also check out this story that came out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, “Technology shaking up media but papers still in good shape.”
Ironically, the article that came out on print got the site traffic figures for INQUIRER.net wrong, heh. The print article stated that we have, ahem, 40, 000 hits (hits, take note, not even pageviews hehe). Obviously, we get more pageviews a day than that, so here are the correct figures in the online article.
“At the Inquirer we realized that convergence was not something we could do overnight,” Valdes said. However, he said the group has since realized that its core product was “news information,” not just the newspaper.
The Inquirer group of companies has since expanded to tabloids like Bandera, specialized magazines like Golf Digest and Mobile Philippines, the Cebu Daily News for the Visayas and INQUIRER.net, which has about three to five million unique visitors each month and over 700,000 pageviews a day.
Wake up, before you go-go.
March 29th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
40,000 hits?!? LOLz!
March 29th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
well, this is not going to be quite surprising. with technology that seems not to have boundaries, you might even be able to watch the news through holograms. (well, i was dreaming about that last night).
March 29th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
How come there are no citations of devices that would actually replace the morning paper? Like the UMPC for one? I prefer reading blogs and online news nowadays, but I would still rather have the news on a handy device I could lug around compared to having to read it on a desktop or laptop (notwithstanding the danger of spilling my coffee on it hehe)
March 29th, 2007 at 11:18 am
You seem rather confident. heh
March 29th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I usually read my paper online first thing in the morning. If I want to view the first pages of any newspapers around the world (including PDI) I visit pressdisplay.com (though I have to pay a subscription fee if I want to view the other pages of the e-edition of the printed ones). This digital age is really changing our lifestyle with the cheap fast internet connections (at least this is true here in Thailand) and the fast becoming cheap but fast hardwares.
Analog TV is slowly becoming a thing of the past and as Alvin Toffler pointed out this IS the information age. It won’t be long when people would be widely watching TV, wathing movie on demand, surfing the Internet, video conferencing among others in one unit, i.e., on what we consider now as the TV monitor.
Given that world peace is stable, poverty eradication takes its course and the digital divide is lessened, I think we are definitely entering a wide-spread digital information age.