Welcome back! Thanks
for keeping up with our “Trendspotting” analysis, instigated by Mr. Frances
Caincross and his theories of new communication technology from the 1980s. I
last teased the two genres we would be using to test Caincross’s theories, of
which I selected Entertainment and Social Media. To gain some insight to these
broad categories, lets take a closer look.
The Entertainment
genre in Media Now touches on the changes of mass entertainment, particularly
with consumption of movies, music, and television. The Internet redefined
entertainment, to put it mildly; prior to the Internet and the introduction of
broadband, entertainment was relegated to other forms of NCTs, all with
specific purposes and outlets. Films were watched in a movie theater, music was
heard on the radio, and television was watch on… television. Of course,
physical forms of these came into
existence too: films made it on to cassette tapes in the 1970s and
eventually evolved into other technologies like laser discs and DVDS; music was
the first form of art to take on physical form, beginning with the gramophone
and ending with the CD; and television, like film, also eventually became a DVD
enterprise.
The construct of the
Internet and its users, however, challenged each medium and its controlling
interests. Music was the first to revolutionize, when three, young, tech-savvy
individuals created a peer-to-peer sharing service that enabled users to “file
share”, leading to the service that became known as “Napster” (Business Week, 2004). This ability to “share” permitted – although deemed illegal in later
court rulings – individuals to download music files without purchasing a
physical copy. This began the age of “piracy”, where copyrighted material is
obtained without the permission or consent of the creator visa vie the
Internet. Despite the bountiful legal precedent established in the early 2000s
against piracy, this capability enabled through Internet access started a
domino effect that would affect the entire entertainment industry, including
film and television.
Piracy was not just an
ethical challenge to modern laws and copyright, represented the beginning of
the departure from the physical into the abstract. Almost all music is consumed
online today in the form of streaming or downloading. Television syndication is
quickly becoming a hallmark of online streaming sites like HULU and Netflix,
and is now venturing into original content. Film has been more stubborn to
adapt, and has suffered the consequences. In 2012, Edelman published a survey
stating only 3% of households attend movies in a theater “frequently,” down
from 28% in 2010 (Deadline, 2012).
What’s most important
is that we have the Internet to thank for the creation of this beautiful
platform that provides bits of joy such as these:
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