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Old Media: Rumors of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

I pay far more attention to traditional media than I ever have. I went to the movies twice over the holidays, and watched a bunch more at home. I thought by now I’d be writing blog posts about the demise of print, but I read more books last year than I did in the 5 years preceding it. And, speaking of books, am I not supposed to have a Kindle by now? (I don’t).

It really crystallized for me the other day when, in a casual conversation with a coworker, I realized I discover an inordinate amount of new music in TV shows, commercials and movies. Six Feet Under may not have put Coldplay on the map (though they did play it relentlessly during its spectacular run), but it put Sia squarely on mine with her epic song “Breathe Me” in the series finale. I spent the entire month of June listening to nothing but Feist after Apple featured the hopelessly irresistible “1 2 3 4” in an iPod commercial. A Toyota commercial literally stopped me in my popcorn-fetching tracks with Pete Droge’s “Going Whichever Way the Wind Blows.” Cadillac introduced me to Black Iris Music, a band that creates music specifically for television commercials. This certainly isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile Cadillac.

After the conversation I checked out my iTunes playlists. Pete Droge? Check. Feist? Duh! Sia? Give me all of it. Even Black Iris Music is in there. Then I took a look at my desk and the area surrounding it. I found an iPhone, an iMac, and a Starbucks mug. I drive a Volkswagen, but have a Prius brochure on my coffee table. Death of old media, pffft.

New rules about old media:

1. Old media is a great way to infuse content into new media;
2. Old school marketers aren’t nearly as dumb as everyone in new media makes them out to be

I spent some time thinking about how it got to be this way, and usage patterns around new and old media. I realized that I control pretty much everything that happens to me. So do you. Whether you laud it a seminal moment in perpetual innovation or curse it the scourge of our cold, isolated modern culture, technology has made it possible for individuals to almost completely direct how they interact with the world. Tivo, various RSS readers, TweetBeep, Digg, Google Alerts - those are my tools. In fact, I filter almost every morsel of media I ingest.

Interest-specific communities and popular social media destinations ensure I select not only the toys I want to play with, but the sandboxes where I play with them. My iPhone lets me play what I want, where I want, whenever I want - fast. This partly explains why I literally did not know anyone, as in NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON (outside of my immediate family), that was not voting for Obama last Fall; technology has allowed me to find people who are a lot like me, and ignore the ones who aren’t (I’m an avid defriender).

It is sobering to think the technologies that were supposed to bring us all together actually further silo people, winnowing diverse physical communities into homogenous digital marketing selects. I suppose it shouldn’t be as jarring to me as it is - people still choose their friends based on commonalities in the real world, but it doesn’t feel right. It’s not that I don’t like my ivory tower, it’s just that it’s drafty.

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