Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

We'll all be watching it on the internet instead - and the advertisers will be chasing online eyeballs. The UK is now the first economy where advertising spend on the internet has outstripped TV ad spend according to a report in the Guardian (online) newspaper.

Will this change the nature of the internet? Possibly - more obtrusive advertising possibly, the decline of amateurism as big bucks crowd out the mom n pop sites, a bonanza for SEO agencies as we all scrabble for Google page one, even more noise and less insight ...

The pace of the decline of 'traditional' TV will quicken as will the growth of the 'synergy' between TV and its online delivery mechanisms. In the UK the Murdoch war on the BBC will grow noisier. It might well be that the real target of Murdoch is the BBC's online presence, which has consistently set high online standards.

Murdoch's abandonment of Labour has more to do with Murdoch's strategy to eliminate competition than it has to do with politics per se, and as the Tories cosy up to Murdoch, they might just throw the old man the bones of the BBC's online output as quid pro quo.

What is certain is that we are witnessing the decline, or perhaps the downgrading, of a once omnipotent medium. For this reason alone, the revolution will not be televised, even if it is taking place within that medium.