State of the Mediasphere

Imagine if we had studied the adoption and development of the medium of Television from its very inception. What would we have learned if we could have tracked and interviewed those who used the nascent medium as it evolved?

That idea is behind an extraordary study underway at USC's Annenberg School for Communication.

Dr. Jeff Cole, Director of the school's Center for the Digital Future, has led a study begun in the year 2000 that includes panels of 2000 participants in 30 different countries - a global 'focus group' of 60,000 people tracking the evolution of the internet and mobile.

He gave a fascinating keynote at the Monaco Media Summit, posted on YouTube and embedded here.



Among his insights:

• Newspapers spend only 30% on their content creators - writers, editors, photographers. Most of the expenses of a newspaper are related to production and distribution, costs which could be virtually eliminated in a digital distribution model, for papers courageous enough to jump the curve.
• TV, by contrast, has a great future, according to Cole. He believes that mobile technology will "allow Television to escape from the home." TV content will be ubiquitous in a mobile broadband world: "It's going to be our constant companion."
• Paying for content on the web is a dead model. Users are willing to accept advertising on the web to get free content...and thanks to Google the marriage of contextually relevant ads to content will unlock real advertiser value in new media.