An article in Time Magazine some years ago reported that new media will “make radio as obsolete as the horse” and destroy the American cinema industry. Children will not need to go to school as classes will be brought directly into their homes and Presidential candidates will use it to win elections. The article was published in May 1948. These new media were American’s new television stations.
Some 62 years after they predicted the death of cinema and radio Time reports that rather then new media killing off ‘old’ media the internet is helping to promote its forbearer. It is tempting, if not frightening, to believe that the internet and social media will damage broadcast media. The newspaper industry has been blaming their declining sales on the availability of free online news for a number of years. The BBC’s monthly iPlayer statistics (an exercise in PR as much as transparency) show the power of new and old media together. According to the figures in February 2010 98.7 million TV and Radio shows were watched on the BBC iPlayer website.
We are only now witnessing the beginning of internet TV and just as reporters in the early 20th century found it difficult to predict the growth of this new medium so to is it equally difficult to predict the possibilities ‘old media’ in the future other than to say it will be multi-modal. The media tracking company Nielsen Wire divides its media reports into what it calls the “Three Screens,” TV, Mobile and Computer (a typically tongue-in-cheek article by The Onion reports that we spend 90% of our time watching glowing rectangles). What makes the web so difficult to predict is that is not just that it is several media but that these media are consumed differently by online societies.
So where does the debate over online journalism leave the broadcast media? The last year in Ireland has seen a growth of online broadcasting applications. For radio Dublin’s 98, News Talk and 2FM all relaunched their websites with state-of-the-art live streaming applications. RTE launched its video catch-up service in April 2009. Ireland has arrived late to online catch-up services RTE is the first allow international audiences have access to its video content.