Mobility and versatility, keywords of tomorrow’s digital media

BY IMPACT Staff

By Ravi M Khanna

There is no doubt that today’s consumer is always on the move. The world used to be more relaxed until the satellites turned it into a global village and improved means of transportation made everyday commuting easier and less time-consuming. Even Arthur C. Clark, who predicted that satellite technology will change the world forever, did not realize it would happen this fast. He told me during an interview (in Sri Lanka where he used to live) that had he realized it would become possible so soon, he would have copyrighted his statement and made some money. He said he never thought it would happen during his lifetime.

So today’s consumers are “mobile” -- not in the “mobile phone” sense – but in the sense that they are always on the go and want technology to cater to their needs wherever they are – on the road, in a car, on a plane, in the office, at home, in the living room or bedroom or bathroom, or even on vacation at a beach or mountain resort. They should be able to check their voice messages, their SMSes, e-mails, etc., whenever they want and wherever they are. And that is how they also want to get the news.

And if that is how they want their news, there is only one “mantra” for media outfits, and that is “versatility” with a capital ‘V’. They should be capable of giving news not just on paper, on radio and TV or on the Internet, but also on whatever device the consumer uses to compute. As they say now, there is no link between “computing” and a “computer”, the two have been separated for ever and don’t have anything to do with each other. It was indeed a pleasure at a recent conference to hear NDTV’s journalist CEO Vikram Chandra say that NDTV is not a TV company, it is also in the business of delivering its content to whatever device the consumer wants – a TV screen, a computer, a Blackberry or an iphone or an ipad.

And if the TV media outfits do not change themselves fast to become versatile, they could become the dinosaurs of the industry. The threat was clearly demonstrated by Chaitanya Kanojia, an Indian born CEO of Aereo, a New York-based technology company. With the help of a small antenna he developed, he streamed live TV programmes over the Internet for a small monthly fee and overnight became a threat to the cable companies who pay millions of dollars to broadcasters for their  content. Major broadcasters such as CBS, NBC Universal, ABC and Fox TV sued him for copyright infringement. But an appeals court ruled that the streams did not infringe copyright laws and could continue to operate. So he is taking his technology to Boston and eventually to 21 more cities.

He told deadline.com, “We looked at our data and it was clear that consumers want a more simple approach to pricing. So, Aereo streams to all kind of devices such as the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, AppleTV and also to units that run Chrome, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Safari and Opera.”

Such advances in technology will also alter the basic nature of TV news, or even news as such. The “speed” factor in the news competition has been replaced by the “versatility” factor. The competition today is how to deliver the news in the best way on the device that the consumer has on the desk, or more possibly on a device that the consumer is holding in his or her hand.

Then there were days when there were three kinds of journalists, a print journalist, a radio journalist and a TV reporter. But today, the persons giving you the news on the Internet could have played all three roles themselves. They could have shot the story, created an audio capsule and written the text also. May be he or she was also the person who published it on the website. So multi-tasking and versatility are in and specialization is on its way out.

Not only that, possibly that story idea was sent to them by a consumer, or the so-called citizen reporter. So we can safely say that this element of “interaction” will be the key to the future of journalism. So the days are not very far when journalists like me will be completely dominated by technocrats or the people who know the technology and create a new product to tell more compelling stories and make a profitable business out of it, just as newspapers and television did for so many decades.

Sometimes it seems that a revolution in the news world is taking place around me and I have no clue how to be a part of it and use it for the kind of journalism that I was taught. And there is no doubt that the next leaders in the news world will be those technocrats who know how to build a profitable business using this element of interactivity, and who know how to be more versatile and keep up with the consumer whose “mantra” will be mobility.

(Author/columnist Ravi M. Khanna has covered South Asia for Voice of America from Washington and New Delhi for more than 24 years)

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