Changing Relationship
Convergence of media content and technology has forever changed the audience’s relationship with media. Today, media consumption is mobile and flexible. The audience don’t have to miss out on media content just because they weren’t home in time to catch a show, didn’t find the book at the bookstore, or forgot to buy the newspaper yesterday. Increasingly, they demand access to media when they want it, where they want it, and in multiple formats. In order to satisfy those demands and to stay relevant in such a converged world, traditional media companies have had to dramatically change their approach to media content and their business models.
Changing relationship with the media
The merging of all media onto one device, such as a tablet or smartphone, blurs the distinctions of what used to be separate media. For example, USA Today (a newspaper) and CBS News (network television news) used to deliver the news in completely different formats, but today their Web forms look quite similar, with listings of headlines, rankings of the most popular stories, local weather forecasts, photo galleries, and video.
With the Amazon Kindle, on which one can read books, newspapers, and magazines, new forms like the Kindle Single challenge old categories. Are the fictional Kindle Singles novellas, or are they more like the stories found in literary magazines? And what about the investigative reports released as Kindle Singles? Should they be considered long-form journalism, or are they closer to nonfiction books? Is listening to an hour-long archived episode of public radio’s This American Life on an iPad more like experiencing a radio program or more like an audio book? (It turns out you can listen to that show on the radio, as a downloadable podcast, as a Web stream, on mobile apps, or purchased on a USB drive or on a CD.)
Not only are the formats morphing, but the audience can now also experience the media in more than one manner, simultaneously. Fans of television shows like The Voice, Empire, and Top Chef, or viewers of live events like NFL football, often multitask, reading live blogs during broadcasts or sharing their own commentary with friends on Facebook and Twitter.
For those who miss the initial broadcasts, converged media offer a second life for media content through deep archive access and repurposed content on other platforms. For example, cable shows like Game of Thrones and Mad Men have found audiences beyond their initial broadcasts through their DVD collections and online video services like Amazon Instant Video and Apple’s iTunes. In fact, some fans even prefer to watch these more complex shows this way, enjoying the ability to rewind an episode in order to catch a missed detail, as well as the ability to binge-watch several episodes back-to-back.
Changing relationship with the internet
Mobile devices and social media have altered the audience’s relationship with the Internet. Two trends are noteworthy: Apple now makes more than five times as much money selling iPhones, iPads, and accessories as it does selling computers, and the number of Facebook users keeps increasing. The significance of these two trends is that through Apple devices and Facebook, the people now inhabit a different kind of Internet — what some call a closed Internet, or a walled garden.
In a world where the small screens of smart phones are becoming the preferred medium for linking to the Internet, we typically don’t get the full, open Internet, one represented by the vast searches brought to us by Google. Instead we get a more managed Internet, brought to us by apps or platforms that carry out specific functions via the Internet. Are you looking for a nearby restaurant? Don’t search on the Internet — use this app especially designed for that purpose. And the distributors of these apps act as gatekeepers. Apple has more than 1.4 million apps in its App Store, and Apple approves every one of them. The competing Android app stores on Google Play and Amazon have a similar number of apps (with many fewer apps in the Windows Store), but Google and Amazon exercise less control over approval of apps than Apple does.
Facebook offers a similar walled garden experience. Facebook began as a highly managed environment, only allowing those with .edu e-mail addresses. Although all are now invited to join Facebook, the interface and the user experience on the site are still highly managed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his staff. For example, if you click on a link to a news article that your friend has shared using a social reader app on Facebook, you will be prompted to add the same app—giving it permission to post your activity to your Wall — before you can access the article. In addition, Facebook has severely restricted what content can be accessed through the open Internet. Facebook has installed measures to stop search engines from indexing users’ photos, Wall posts, videos, and other data. The effect of both Apple’s devices and the Facebook interface is a clean, orderly, easy-to-use environment but one in which we are “tethered” to the Apple App Store or to Facebook.(https://www.daowen.com)
The open Internet — best represented by Google (but not its Google + social networking service, which is more confining, like Facebook) and a Web browser — promised to put the entire World Wide Web at our fingertips. On the one hand, the appeal of the Internet is its openness, its free-for-all nature. But of course the trade-off is that the open Internet can be chaotic and unruly, and apps and other walled garden services have streamlined the cacophony of the Internet considerably.
Changing economics of media and the internet
The digital turn in the mass media has profoundly changed the economics of the Internet. Since the advent of Napster, which brought (illegal) file sharing to the music industry, each media industry has struggled to rethink how to distribute its content for the digital age. The content itself is still important — people still want quality news, television, movies, music, and games — but they want it in digital formats and for mobile devices.
Apple’s response to Napster established the new media economics. Apple provided a new market for music on the iTunes store, selling digital music. In return, Apple got a 30 percent cut of the revenue for all music sales on iTunes, simply for being the “pipes” that delivered the music. Apple sold billions of songs and hundreds of millions of digital devices. Amazon started as a traditional online retailer, taking orders online and delivering merchandise from its warehouses. As books took the turn into the digital era, Amazon followed Apple’s model and started selling e-books, taking its cut for delivering the content. Along the way, Amazon and Apple (and Google through its Android apps) have become leading media companies. They don’t make the content, but they are among the top digital distributors of books, newspapers, magazines, music, television, movies, and games.
The Internet has really become the hub for media convergence, a place where music, television shows, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, books, games, and movies are created, distributed, and presented.
Words & Expressions
flexible：灵活的
dramatically：急剧地
rewind：倒带；倒片
install：安装
cacophony：刺耳的声音
[1] Convergence[EB/OL].(2016-03-22)[2022-02-23].https://open.lib.umn.edu/mediaandculture/chapter/1-4-convergence.
[2] Media convergence: The good, the bad and the ugly[EB/OL].(2016-08-29)[2022-01-22].https://nationcommunication.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/media-convergence-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly.
[3] Convergence and mobile media[EB/OL].(2019-08-22)[2022-01-20].https://www.macmillanhighered.com/BrainHoney/Resource/6700/digital_first_content/trunk/test/mediaculture10eupdate/mediaculture10eupdate_ch2_4.html.