Interesting program on TV (who knew?)
It’s not too often that the TV ends up on Canal Savoir, that the whole family stops whatever else they’re doing, and that we listen en groupe. This evening, almost by accident, we happened across a lecture on media and advertising presented by Luc Dupont from the University of Ottawa. The reaction of our group was uniform: we’d all like to go back to school and learn from someone who is as erudite and topical.
His lecture touched on the advertising industry and the requirement that it mutate, given the new media consumption habits of the average Canadian. We have adopted the ‘net as one of our foundations for information, to the detriment of radio, TV and print media. We have also become more critical, more difficult to dupe, more informed generally.
Imagine the shock in store for certain media companies. They’ve invested in newspapers, radio and TV networks, music publishing, retail outlets, internet. They’ve also learned (to the detriment of their “bottom line” that we are no longer willing to hand over increasing sums of money for what they sell. If their model doesn’t change, we will simply move around their slow-moving vehicle and continue on our merry way. The permission given by the CRTC to increase commercial airtime quota will provide only brief respite. We now know that information will be free.
The point of the lecture was to inform. I am better informed. Goal met. If I was back at the age where I didn’t know how to be an autodidact, I would rush to enroll in such a course of study. Now, I’ll simply seek more of the same: content that edifies. I won’t return to school, because the school has come to me.
On other fronts, we’re minutes away from three hours of Bob and Doug MacKenzie. Some things don’t change…
