LIMINOCENTRIC MEDIA

LEGACY MEDIA

If you think you produce film or television content today – you are probably wrong.  

All forms of media, be it entertainment, journalism or advertising no longer exist as we once knew them. In fact, all forms of media that existed prior to 1990 are now obsolete. Just ask a newspaper publisher.  Television, technically, no longer exists.  Advertising still exists, but is struggling against technology.

Most media companies have no idea how to integrate their old ways of doing things (their business models) with the new viewing habits of audiences and the flood of new technology.  

The fact is, they can’t.  

No matter how hard it tries, a steam locomotive will never become an airplane. 

PUSH MEDIA VS. PULL MEDIA  

Introducing the pushmi-pullyu

All legacy media is, by definition, “push” media. The content is prepared, packaged and delivered to audiences in a complete, uneditable, whole. From motion pictures and television to newspapers, consumers have no choice but to accept the entirety of the package, including unwanted content or advertising. Push media is also only available at specified dates and times, further restricting the options of those who wish to access it.  

Today, audiences are beginning to regard all forms of push media as advertising or propaganda.  

“Pull” media is the dominant form of all new media; audiences pull content from available sources.  All forms of new media are pull media.  Audiences acquire only the content they want, in their preferred format, at their own convenience.  

Today, all premium content is, or soon will be, pull media.  

But what happens when consumers begin to interact with and share pull media?  

Borrowing from Hugh Lofting’s book “Dr. Doolittle”, enter the pushmi-pullyu.  Now audiences both pull media from sources, then push some of it back out to their social networks – which are themselves discreet audiences.  

Everybody becomes a curator, everybody becomes a broadcast channel. I refer to the resulting structure as “liminocentric”.  

LIMINOCENTRIC 

Think of Doctor Who’s TARDIS …now hold it in your hands.

Liminocentric is one of those delicious words, like juxtaposition, which graduate students and writers will soon render meaningless through abuse. But before sinking to the level of an adjective tossed across chess boards and checkered table cloths in late night cafés and bistros, it serves as an excellent descriptive for the evolution of what we have come to term “media”.   

Liminocentric:   

1. Having an identity between the very small and very large such that both are equivalent or indistinguishable.  
2. Arranged such that the centre simultaneously encompasses external elements while remaining located within them.  

Having an identity between the very small and very large such that both are equivalent or indistinguishable –

… the galaxy in a drop of water.

In a liminocentric structure, scale extremities behave in identical ways, much like subatomic particles behave in the same manner as celestial bodies.  

Scale extremities in emerging media are almost imperceptible. The web or mobile presence of a multinational corporation is no different in perceived scale from that of a small company or individual and the tools used to create both are identical. This leveled playing field has upset the dynamics of celebrity and the perceived value of size. The ironies of this play out on a daily basis: the traditional career path to celebrity is displaced by stars emerging from YouTube; a small, regional, advertising agency gets the national contract; the Hollywood blockbuster has fewer page views than a viral video of a puppy, and an entire political campaign is waged with almost no traditional media coverage.  

This affects business transactions and governments as well. Now, every person with internet access has the same communications capabilities as a large corporation or even a government.  

Neither scale nor distance apply in the virtual space.  

There is no “there” here and everything scales to the size of the display screen.  

Arranged such that the centre simultaneously encompasses external elements while remaining located within them – 

the Matryoshka Doll Effect

Much like a recursive set of nesting Russian dolls where the innermost doll paradoxically contains the outermost; a small appliance today connects to the totality of the information contained by the internet, which, of course, connects to all of the data contained by the appliance, since it, too, forms part of the internet.  

I refer to this phenomenon as the Matryoshka Effect, after the Russian dolls.  

An entire galaxy contained in the palm of one’s hand – much like opening a door to outer space, or Dr. Who’s TARDIS.  

This is the relationship we now have with all forms of communications media.  

But I’m a filmmaker!

Congratulations. However, chances are the motion picture was not shot on actual film, almost certainly not edited on film and may never even be projected using reels of film – if it is ever shown in a theater. Considering the number of “films” that are released directly to video-on-demand, cable or DVD, it is fair to say that “film” is as anachronistic a term as “horseless carriage”.  

Film is now a venue, not a medium.

Motion picture audiences go to the theater as an event, not just to watch a film. The motion picture itself will join the maelstrom of content being distributed around the globe electronically, in some cases even while it is still showing in theaters. The effect of this is already challenging business models for the film industry. Theatrical releases are pressured to provide audiences with a sensory experience they cannot reproduce at home. Movie rentals are dropping steadily as releases move to VOD platforms and studios are scrambling in near desperation to understand the three headed monster of YouTube, Netflix and Google.  

What about television?

Given that the average viewing age of television audiences is 51 and adding to that the triple digit migration away from traditional television, time shifting, cord cutting and internet television channels, it is safe to say that television was absorbed into the internet some time ago. While television journalism felt this blow first, all broadcast and cable channels are seeing declines in viewership. Some pundits will argue that viewership has been increasing, but, if those same pundits will recall, newspaper subscriptions jumped, just before they fell over the cliff.

Newspaper publishers realized too late that: 

1. delivering wood pulp to people’s homes was no longer a viable business model,
2. their web and mobile product was NOT a promotional vehicle to drive subscriptions, but, rather, their print product was an advertisement for their web and mobile content.

Television producers, news organizations being at the top of that list, must understand that their “push” media product is, in fact, an advertisement for their web and mobile content.

As television producers try to find new ways to protect and monetize their content, they would do well to remember the fate of the music industry.

But we’ll go broke!

No. You won’t. At least, you won’t unless you cannot adapt. In fact, once understood, the liminocentric nature of media today provides more avenues for monetization than ever before. First, the ubiquity of mobile appliances provides instant access to content; good, bad or terrible, to global audiences. Reach has never been greater, only the business models are broken.  

To go broke would require a stubborn adherence to obsolete business models and an unwillingness to adopt new distribution models …so a few large companies will go broke.  They will be replaced by new companies, with a new and better understanding of what constitutes media today. 

One thing is for certain: there is no going back.