Gephyrophillia | Watch This Space #163

Originally Posted onn 01/21/2008 by Jeff Harris

Something I mentioned back at Thoughtnami a few weeks ago kind of affected me. The modern era of entertainment is on the cusp of ending. The end of broadcast television as many generations knew it will end in a little over a year. The rules for media practices are also being rewritten even as we speak as the vessels for our entertainment are no longer confined to radio, television, and movie theaters. The mediums of entertainment will no longer be restricted to tapes, CDs, or even DVDs. We've gotten to the point that we could carry gigabytes of storage space in our pockets and have terrabytes of storage in our homes. When I started The X Bridge a decade ago, I created it with a machine that only had a 1 GB hard drive. Now, I have a 1 GB compact flash media card smaller than my thumb in a small space in my digital minicam.

The whole purpose of the Writers Strike is that the writers and producers know what's on the horizon while the rest of us are just now figuring it out. We should have known though. We've become a generation of tubeheads creating, uploading, viewing, and criticizing all sorts of video content on sites like YouTube, Google Video (by the way, am I wrong for asking why both services continue to co-exist? It's like if Coca-Cola bought Pepsi and continued to sell Tropicana and Minute Maid orange juce), MSN Video, and other video-sharing sites "cool kids" know about. We've become a generation of podheads with white cords hanging down our necks buying, ripping, stealing, listening to, and watching music and video. Strangely, this new era has been in the works for a good while, but a lot of us only paid attention to other things that seem trivial by today's standards.

The whole migration to broadband has created generations of channels that will be the basis and platforms for the medium of the new era. The first generation of channels were essentially spinoffs of brands already known to the general public. You know them, the broadband channels with the cool-sounding-but-not-really names like Overdrive, Motherload, V-Spot, Fix, and Jetstream.

The second generation of channels aren't owned by major companies and are driven by creative minds, either behind the scenes, in front of the camera, or flipping the bills. Created by familiar voices, they are the new media companies that were the first to challenge the system of the old media rule. Some succeeded. A lot failed, primarily because they try to emulate the practices of the old media. That's pretty much why The Anime Network, in its traditional linear form, failed. It had greater success in the on-demand model rather than the linear channel model, and that's why it failed.

Have you ever noticed that there are rarely new cable channels these days? Everything is either rebuilt, reformatted, or remodeled. The only company really creating cable channels is NBC Universal, but they're acquiring libraries and companies and building channels out of that.

The next generation of channels is the ones created by regular folks like us. We create our own content. We create our own voice. We learn to entertain ourselves. Some feel that this is the generation to come.

This generation is here right now. This is the generation that will likely bring down the foundations of the old media, and that's what makes them afraid. They try to entice the generation of creators with promises of glory and fame while they end up with all profits generated from it. That's why the Writers Strike is still happening as of this writing. The Strike not only exposed the greed of the old media but also the weaknesses of the industry as whole. The reprecussions of the strike are slowly being felt. There's a sense of weariness now, but that will pass. If the writers don't get what they want, well, they'll become part of the next generation themselves, creating products without the need for the old foundations of the old media, including the products that originally came from them.

Essentially, fear empowers their survival. The fear of the new era is one that allows the old media to survive, only because they know that their era is about to end. The next generation, meanwhile, sits and waits knowing its time is about to begin.

*end transmission*

Jeff Harris,
The X Bridge Creator/Webmaster
January 21, 2008