Accessible media = successful media
Doug Warshaw, CMO and co-founder of video-editing/sharing site Motionbox, recently started a blog called The Warshaw Curve. The curve is a graphic representation of the changing nature of media consumption.
Doug and I talked about this curve when I met him a few months ago in the Motionbox offices. And while he doesn't provide any hard data in his first post, his observations are spot on: In the post-DVR and PPV world, we are more likely to consume media by choice rather than circumstance.
For example, take local news. Local news has suffered from declining viewers for years. The average evening TV news share has dropped from 19.5% to 15.5% since 1997. The ratings for those same programs dropped 13% in 2005. The reason? Probably a combination of lifestyle changes (longer work hours, etc) combined with a growth in news options: It's easier for me to read local news on the Web, for example, and see national stories on other programs. In other words, the mandate for local news is shrinking because the stations provide little value that can't be found elsewhere. Hence the exhortation by folks like Steve Safran and Jeff Jarvis that local news needs to go hyperlocal. [1]
Now Doug doesn't say this explicitly in his blog, but I think another way to communicate his idea is to say:
- as the difficulty of viewing media decreases, the more likely we are to watch it.
- as the number of opportunities to watch media increases, the more likely we are to watch it.
The simple reason is that digital technologies acclimate us to consumption by convenience. Our own anecdotal experiences reflect this truism: I won't watch NBC's Heroes at 9pm Tuesday (or whenever), but I will watch it on iTunes or on my Tivo. I won't watch Letterman every night, but I will watch it on YouTube. Thus, while I think Doug's "low end" and "high end" parameters are
good descriptors, another description that would have described that
content pre-DVR and PPV would be "readily available" and "harder to
access." We didn't watch as much of the good stuff because it was simply harder to get to.
Today, we have more choices for viewing media. There's an opportunity cost to those choices, which is less casual viewing and more intentional consumption. I look forward to seeing more of Doug's writing and work.
[1] The exception to the local news decline is local morning news, which has seen an uptick in viewers. As one local news manager put it in the 2006 State of the News Media report: "It’s the radio of the new millennium with pictures. You can watch and get dressed, get your day going." Also: Local morning news is most effective on TV, and useless on the Web or in print later in the day.
