Out with the Old & in With the New?

Blogs, video blogs, podcasts, online radio and TV streaming and hypertext. This is language of our e-generation. The development of these new, emerging technology seems to be determining how we currently use media and how we will appropriate it in the future. These new communication technologies offer free, easily accessible media that are available to anyone at anytime. Traditional corporate communications businesses are faced with a challenge of keeping up with these new forms of technology. Concerns over the erasure of traditional media – radio, television and newspapers - have been expressed as disappearing media… but are they really?

Conventional music for RADIO seems to be fading. Teenagers don’t know radio, but they understand iTunes. With the help of wireless Internet, satellite connections and podcasting, 95% of music and information disseminated through radio reaches the population because it is free, portable and ubiquitous. Radio on the Internet, such as Pandora, can hold a minimum of 1,000 songs, with people downloading their own music, controlling their own portable players. With online radio, individuals attain several advantages:

1) It's free
2) Users label themselves as self-proclaimed djs
3) Users remix and mash up songs and disseminate their own content for others to subscribe to

However, issues of credibility and professionalism are still questioned on the Internet. Moreover, not all of information offline can be accessed on the Internet.

With the portability feature of radio, there is also a hypothesis about the development of a portable TELEVISION. With online streaming of video and video blogs, virtually any video is available to be downloaded or watched. Slingbox, for example, is an Internet TV streaming device that lets consumers watch their cable, satellite or PVR on their computer and even their mobile phones. Similarly to online radio, online television is

1) Free to create their own TV channel
2) Upload and stream their videos
3) Anyone can have their own TV channel online
4) Reinforces user-generated content provides a sense of ownership
5) Encourages interactivity

With the invention of hypertext - virtual text on the Internet - communication researchers are arguing that BOOKS will soon become a luxury item. Digital material is:

1) Easy to store
2) Searchable
3) Unable to physically disintegrate over time
4) Save trees and money

An electronic book can be everywhere at once with one quick click of the mouse. Amateur journalists are playing the role of professionals who are no longer dependent on producers and gatekeepers to disseminate information, offering voices and opportunities to those who could not.

New media is becoming ubiquitous and proliferating among user generated content, mainstream media outlets are now catering to a collective power that is expressing alternative viewpoints, something those corporations are adjusting to. Our viewing time is now flattening out and spreading to other multimedia areas while news networks are using their audience to devices on the Internet. However, issues of credibility and professionalism are still questioned on the Internet. Moreover, not all of information offline can be accessed on the Internet. But the mainstream media continue to adapt to the ever-evolving technology that is permeating not only our computers, but our phones, radio and even our lives.

Is it, then, the end of radio, television and print? People still enjoy the convenience of the book, the community bonding with watching a favourite television show or going out to the movies and enjoying the many alternative voices on the radio that a personal ipod playlist may exclude. It also offers an alternative to people who are not that technologically savvy. However, with the youth market as the prime audience that is accelerating this new technological trend of Internet media, I think we will be finding a way to mix and mash the old with the new. One prime advantage of the Internet in which mainstream media sometimes doesn't offer, however, is user participation and user created content. Both traditional and non-conventional media technologies have their advantages and disadvantages, but I do not think this will cause the disappearance of either medium and hopefully, we will continue to find a balance between the old and the new.

So, from whichever device you are reading this on, feel free to collaborate, remix, mash-up, or create your own response!

Check out the videos of The End of Radio, The End of TV and The End of Print HERE.