3W Design Group - Media

We all get used to our habits, our routines. These routines include certain gadgets we use, certain clothes we wear, certain routes to work, and so on. Once in a while we change our routine. Maybe order a different drink at the coffee shop or wear a new pair of cool shoes you found at the sale rack. Those are little changes. They are NOT the kind of changes that re-direct your life. For life-altering changes you need to toss in technology or religion. In this post I will refer to technology.

One new technology habit that is causing the sands to shift on the topic of media consumption is the viewing of television programs or movies on small devices and tiny screens.

This new habit came up last week on the podcast program I am one half of, Pop Goes the Culture. The program was called Future Media Redux and in it we were revisiting some predictions we’d made two years earlier on how people would be consuming their media. My podcasting partner Susie Watson is a self-confessed technology Luddite and since she doesn’t want to watch “The Office” on a 3.5 inch portable media player screen she thinks no one else will want to either. That ignores the fact that 18 - 34 year olds are already watching media on these small devices and the fact that the older generations have little or no interest in sharing this experience with them doesn’t matter. I could not convince Susie that small screen portability is replacing the stationary large screen experience, but maybe our listeners could.
Speaking for the 25 year old age group, listener Misty told us she uses her iPod Video to watch TV or movies when she is on the go. And while she prefers the large screen, she uses her video iPod at the gym as well as at work to listen to programming.

Representing the 40 year olds, Bernadette also disagreed with Susie. She has opted not to have a DVR on her home television set, so rather than missing the television programs she likes, Bernadette downloads it for the small screen and watches on her video iPod. In addition, Bernadette lives in Australia and tells us it takes forever for some American television programming to air on TV there, so the younger generation downloads the shows they want and watches them on their iPods. Even the thirty-somethings are into it. She says on Friday night at the pub, they bring their video iPods along and show eachoother what they’ve got and watch each other’s programs.

The lesson is that while people of my generation (45 and over) argue about new technology the younger generations - on a worldwide basis - are adopting it. This generation is taking on new media consumption habits and shedding the old ones that don’t fit their lifestyle.

Most of the time we older folks like to think we have something to teach the younger generation. We still do. But when it comes to relevant technology, we’d better throw away our assumptions and pay attention or we’re going to get left in the dust of the constantly shifting sands.