The Technology and Media Transformation of our time compared to Broadcast TV

Every few decades or so, the United States enters a key historical moment when the country faces a monumental challenge or series of challenges. These moments require a new kind of politics to transform the status quo and deal with the new challenge in all of its complexity. They often require the use of very powerful new tools and new media to mobilize vast numbers of people in new ways. And they tend to require a reconfiguration of political coalitions, partly to incorporate newcomers into the political mainstream.

We are in such a moment now.

Think back to the last time we were clearly in such a situation in the post-WW2 era. The powerful new media introduced at that time was broadcast television. It had been invented in California in the 1930s but because of the war had only been adapted on a large scale in the 1950s. For the first decade the medium was very experimental with old performers and formats trying to adapt to TV, and with the business model going through trial and error (the sponsored Texaco Hour or a two minute commercial?) It was only in the next decade of the 1960s that we began to feel the full repercussions of the transformational new medium. We saw the cultural impact of broadcast television as it accelerated the mass phenomenon of rock and roll, with, for example, the Beatles connecting with millions through the Ed Sullivan show. The social impact of broadcast television became apparent when people could actually see black protest marchers blasted by fire hoses in Alabama. In 1963 Martin Luther King could electrify not only those who gathered around the Lincoln Memorial but those who gathered around their television sets.

Broadcast television also provided an immensely powerful political tool. The 1960 presidential debates provided its first entry into politics: a sweaty Dick Nixon with bags under his eyes went up against a young, energetic JFK, who would later be described as “telegenic.” Those who heard the debate on radio thought Nixon had won, but those who watched it on TV overwhelmingly favored Kennedy. By 1964 progressive Democrats were airing TV ads that showed a little girl walking through a field of flowers with a narrated countdown followed by the mushroom cloud of a nuclear blast. The image played on everyone’s worst fears and brought a visceral reaction. The election ended up with conservative Barry Goldwater buried in one of the worst landslides in American political history. By the 1968 election, however, TV routinely showed fresh combat footage out of the war in Vietnam. Coverage of the Democratic convention in Chicago showed more images of student riots outside than of politicians giving speeches inside. In less than a decade progressives with political power went from being masters of the new medium to being victims of it.

This powerful media of television was not just used for the purely political purposes to win elections, but also was used for more long-term social and political purposes to shift public opinion and gain citizen support in the solving the massive challenges of that time, like civil rights or spreading the wealth of the burgeoning economy to include the poor of our great society. It was used in similar ways to help solve the international challenges of that time: the rise of the Soviet Union, the spread of communism and the threat of nuclear war.

Today we are in a very similar situation. The powerful new media being introduced this time is the Internet, developed in the 1970s, first adopted in the 1990s, and now transforming the media landscape. In fact, the Internet is more transformative than broadcast television ever was. Think of it as “broadcast squared.” It’s not just a fundamentally new and alternative media distribution system, but it also is directly affecting all existing media sectors. It’s ultimately bringing them all onto the same digital media platform and leading to the so-called convergence that media experts have talked about for years. The Internet also is bringing capabilities to media that have never before been seen. It is allowing precise targeting to individual viewers. It is bringing interaction and immediate feedback from customers. This means it gives the individual much more control over what they will see as well as the ability to contribute into a medium which had always been one-way and mass. The Internet is not just a conduit to people but a tool for them to reach back and reach others. It is fundamentally different than the media that came before.

The incessant talk about the Internet, frankly, is warranted. Not only does it provide those new capabilities, but also the infrastructure is extending into a wireless infrastructure that is allowing people to get their media anywhere. The infrastructure is proving to be ubiquitous through many different wired and wireless systems and channels, so you are able to get your media at anytime. Anywhere really means anywhere because the entire infrastructure is global so you potentially are able to reach anyone on the planet. And because of the inexorable drops in the cost of computer technology, using the infrastructure also is getting cheap to boot.

No wonder, like TV, the arrival of this medium is proving to be extremely disruptive. It is challenging the media industry status quo with huge discontinuities, not the least of which is the rise of a range of new players, some that aren’t even media companies in the old sense. In 2005 the search company Google sold more than $6 billion dollars in ads, nearly double what it sold the previous year. This is more advertising than sold by any newspaper chain, magazine publisher or television network. In 2007, Google is estimated to have advertising revenue of $11.8 billion dollars. This would place it fourth among American media conglomerates in total ad sales after Viacom, the News Corporation and Disney, but ahead of NBC and Time Warner.

The Internet’s impact on media promises huge social and cultural repercussions. We can’t predict the impact with certainty because we are in the moment right now. The arrival of this new era can be seen as starting in the fall of 2005, when broadband penetration passed a third of all American households, and a flurry of new media business deals, such as Apple Computer coming out with a video iPod, marked the beginning of the migration to the web of television, that new media of the last era that had grown up to be the dominant media of the late 20th century.

Inevitably we will see how the ‘Internetized’ media will profoundly change politics too. Anytime you fundamentally change the way you reach consumers and audiences through media, you fundamentally change the way you reach voters and constituents too. We are at the beginning of that shift now, where the norm of 30-second political commercials on broadcast TV will be superseded by a wave of innovations that whittle political advertising down to 10 second individualized video spots on cell phones, or some other configuration that we can’t predict.

We are entering a period of enormous change and innovation, but also confusion and disruption, a time of immense challenge but equally immense opportunities. The political movement that masters this transition early can leapfrog its opposition and possibly take the upper hand in politics for the next generation or more.