Bob Garfield, pundit for Ad Age and NPR’s On The Media, smashed media complacency two years ago with his brilliant essay, The Chaos Scenario (MP-3)
What if TV as we know it were replaced by something really, really cool?
CHORUS: [SINGING] MEET GEORGE JETSON-
BOB GARFIELD: Let’s say it’s 2020. George’s job at Spacely Sprockets is gone, because digits are the new widgets. Over the air network TV is gone, too, along with program schedules, affiliate stations and Jimmy Kimmel’s career. Jane, Judy and Elroy get their entertainment and their news any way they wish - TV, phone, camera, laptop, game console, MP3 player.
Satellite radio is a 4 billion dollar, 8-track tape player stored on a high shelf in the garage, pushed aside by podcasting, which is free.
Yesiree, by George, it’s a brave and exciting new world. [MUSIC]
But - it’s in the future - which doesn’t come till later. So, what if the old model collapsed before the bright, bold Jetsonian future is ready to pick up the pieces? What would it mean for the media business? What would it mean for advertisers? What would it mean for us - TV viewers who have more or less gotten used to plopping on to the couch to watch, say, Fear Factor.
Here’s what it would mean. It would mean radical changes in the economy, the culture, and the society itself. And they wouldn’t be easy to swallow. And, by the way, it’s happening right now.
We are heading, all of us, into a historically turbulent moment in the history of media, with the very real risk of disruption on a mass scale. Call it the Chaos Scenario . . .
Here’s Garfield’s latest essay in Ad Age: Chaos Scenario 2.0.
Maybe you’d better lean forward. Presently you will be given five reasons to consider something barely imaginable: a post-apocalyptic media world substantially devoid of brand advertising as we have long known it.
It’s a world in which Canadian trees are left standing and broadcast towers aren’t. It’s a world in which consumer engagement occurs without consumer interruption, in which listening trumps dictating, in which the internet is a dollar store for movies and series, in which ad agencies are marginalized and Cannes is deserted in the third week of June.
It is a world, to be specific, in which marketing — and even branding — are conducted without much reliance on the 30-second spot or glossy spread.
Because nobody is much interested in seeing them, and because soon they will be largely unnecessary . . .
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