It all seems to have a lot more depth…
My 83-year old father-in-law is on email, which I think it pretty good.
However, before he emails us a note, he writes it out longhand on yellow legal pads to be sure he has got it right.
Then he copies the handwritten note as an email, which he carefully types out and sends.
He’s got the concept of email…sort of.. but he has a hard time shaking his lifetime of experience in written letters.
As television encounters the world of Facebook and Twitter, it suffers the same sort of problem.
A lifetime of experience runs headlong into a new technology. They ‘get it’ … but only sort of.
The web is an ever evolving animal, and we are all collectively discovering what it does best.
If you look at NYTimes.com on the web, what you see is a newspaper stuck onto a website. It’s not really an online play, it’s a print play jammed onto the web. Works… but only sort of.
As television grapples with the web, it does the same sort of thing. A lifetime of linear programming and broadcasting (we show it, you watch it) is trying its best to come to terms with the dymanics of the web. They get it, but only sort of.
Which is too bad, because the potential here is limitless, for those who can break free of old conventions and see broadcast television as but one element of a far more complex and far more interesting architure.
Facebook, which began only two years ago, already has 170 million users, and growing.
That tells you something about what works really well on the web – what we might all social networks.
The power of Twitter and its obvious attraction are part and parcel of the ‘new’ architecture – one which is both passive and active. Watch and participate.
Yesterday’s NY Times ran a fascinating article about Twitter, and how it is starting to be used- for the instantaneous exchange of information.
What television is really good at is creating a nexus for those with a similar interest. ie, viewers of HGTV all have a similar interest in home repair or purchase. Viewers of the Food Network all have a similar interest in food. Viewers of The Travel Channel all have a shared interest in travel.
They are defacto affinity groups (something advertisers would really like to get in front of); and they all have a shared interest.
They would most likely really like to meet and talk to each other – either about recipes, house repairs or bargain travel trips.
Passive television (unless you have very thin walls) is an extremely private affair. You watch, and that’s the end of the story.
But there’s an enormous opportunity being overlooked here. The natural affinity groups that television programming attracts (John Ford once likened Cable TV to video fly-paper), can be taken far further than just eyeballs on a screen. They can be bound up together.
Television program+web+twitter could do this.
And it could be a remarkably powerful tool for informing, binding and delivering an audience – not to mention building viewer loyalty..and feedback.
It makes television 3-dimensional.
But so far, the only use of the web by most TV networks has been to rebroadcast parts of their shows or rather feeble ‘if you would like more information’ stuff.
Now is a time for television networks to get proactive and create programs and platforms that respond to what the public has clearly shown they are looking for – communities.
I am thinking of sharing this idea with a few network executives. Maybe I should write it out on legal pads for them? Maybe not.
