GEITF Report: The Internet

While the GEITF’s official MacTaggart lecture may have harked back to the “good old days” of TV, the alternative MacTaggart, given by US journalist Michael Wolff, was concerned with future technology, namely the internet.

The author of Burn Rate, which charts his experience in the dotcom boom, gave a brief history of New Media, but questioned whether the internet should ever have been called a “medium” in the first place. “We never mistook the telephone for media.” he argued, saying that the internet doesn’t work as media because it cannot hold the attention or engage the viewer emotionally, hence the bust that followed the boom.

What the internet has done, he admitted, has changed the way news is valued as a commodity. “No-one will ever be able to make a business selling headlines again.” he said. “Its gone, they’re free, like oxygen.”

Wolff also predicted that the downfall of the internet will foreshadow a similar slide for other broadcast media. “Broadband will not work…at least not in time to save any of us.” he grinned at an increasingly uncomfortable Edinburgh crowd. According to Wolff, one thing is certain and that is everything will get smaller- audiences, revenue, interest- just as the media companies are consolidating and getting bigger and the choice of channels increasing.

“The media has stopped working for the advertising business.” he declared. This, he feels, is why revenue is drying up. However this seemingly gloomy outlook was tempered by the interesting prospect that, as far as Wolff is concerned, TV is at the end of a phase. Rupert Murdoch and his like are nearing the end of their reign of power, he feels, and few could imagine what will come next.

GEITF: 020 7430 1333 www.geitf.co.uk

Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive