Cord-cutting provides us an opportunity to shape the next generation of media
Let's kill off television
Where do you get your news?
It is a simple question. But it is increasingly relevant as fewer people get their news from television and even fewer trust what is actually on television. 38% of U.S. adults now claim they often get their news online, through social media, websites, and apps. This is, of course, inversely correlated with age. Older Americans increasingly watch television and younger increasingly online.
This topic came up over dinner this week, when I asked my in-laws (both 50-something) how they each get their news. Neither watch television, but both try to stay up to speed with national news.
- My father-in-law gets his news from a Google News-like native iPhone app that customizes the daily rundown. His characterization of the news he sees? Fairly bad. He ignores the click-bait headlines and journalists he knows are completely out of touch.
- My mother-in-law primarily gets her news from email — specifically email marketing. Think, nonprofit, political party emails that fill up your inbox asking you to donate and take critical action. She calls her congressmen and signs petitions, but only when they align to what she believes.
This lack of video in my in-laws’ daily media diet is an anomaly for their age demographic, but it is a perfect illustration of how individuals are leaving TV for reading. It’s an effort to find trustworthy news in a medium they can more easily research and confirm. This growing trend is even stronger with millennials and younger.
Pew Research says younger Americans are more likely than older to prefer reading news. Adults 18–29 claim to get their news by reading 42% of the time and watching 38%, while 65+ read 27% and watch 58%. This is a gigantic shift.
Television isn’t going anywhere anytime soon (prime-time cable viewership actually jumped up 55% in 2016 but mostly by Democrats). Baby Boomers still have 20+ good years in them.
But understanding this dramatic shift from cable-boxes to online media (and reading) can help us predict and shape what the next generation of media will look like. Inevitably, television will be coerced off the box and onto the internet, but not before taking on all the attributes of the internet.
Growth in online news has indeed been dramatic and trust in institutions is falling. According to both Edelman’s 2017 Trust Barometer Report and Gallup’s Trust in Mass Media Survey, capital M Media has dropped precipitously. What does this mean?
It means that Americans, armed with Google, Facebook, Twitter and a slew of other native customization tools (both on Android and iPhone mobile/tablets) are — like my wife’s parents — becoming more suspicious of mainstream media, particularly television, as an institution and more aware of types of media they follow.
On the bright side, reliability on social media is still extremely low, earning the trust of only 37% of U.S. Adults in 2017. But it’s worth noting that friends and family members are still a strong indicator of trust. Matched with connectivity, this means that as people increasingly receive news online, social media will strengthen as long as the platforms connect users with people they trust (tangentially, this could be why nobody trusts anything on Twitter).
As trust in institutions falls, Americans are becoming more dependent on individuals— meaning they are trusting one particular news organization, journalist, or friend who they deem “in the know.” After all, it is our present hyper-connected situation that allows us to quickly make distinctions on what we believe given the overwhelming abundance of information.
As we look to the next generation of media, we should analyze carefully everything we have learned and try to differentiate entertainment and quality information. We should refuse to conflate the two, even though go-getters like Snapchat and Instagram are desperately trying to merge them. We should try to undo the damage done by television.
Neil Postman, who I quote so often, struggled to define what non-entertainment media looks like. He barely understood what a computer was (in 1984), let alone what the internet would become. But he understood the array of light, colors, and music. He understood that the visual medium is a captivating art form. It provokes beauty, escapism, and levity. Pictures and video have never been a serious mechanism for thought and sadly can never be an avenue as long as they evoke emotions like anger and laughter instead of focus and critical thinking. But was else can flickering lights do?
The web is not perfect. The internet has taken on a lot of the baggage that television brought with it: the snark, laughter, and music that outlines any pop culture segment. It dispelled intellectual curiosity in exchange for engagement. How many of us would rather go to a movie than a lecture?However, as cord cutters release themselves from the oppression of the television, the internet will again recreate itself in the image of the next popular medium.
Maybe we millennials are actually right about something for once. Turning our gaze more towards reading and less towards watching, perhaps we can recreate the intellectual vigor of ARPANET and CSNET that gave birth to the internet in the first place.
It is also possible I am entirely too optimistic.
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