After eight strange years of being stuck in a rut, our new president is showing us what change looks like in politics. Beyond that change in the American culture is happening all over the place. For instance, the daily newspaper, as an institution, is dying. The trend has been accelerated by the recent economic upheaval, but the death spiral had been underway for sometime.
That, while blogging is burgeoning; so is Facebook.People aren’t spending their time reading newspapers like they once did. And, here’s the bigger picture -- people aren’t watching television like they used to, either.
So, does that mean all the advertising that was going into newspapers and broadcast has migrated to the Internet?
No.
You probably won’t read all that much about this in the newspaper. You probably won’t see an expose on television, either, because they’re scared to admit the very thing that has driven our economy and shaped out way of life for decades, ADVERTISING, is sick. It’s not on its deathbed, yet, but the advertising industry is anything but healthy right now.
All those ads that screamed for attention by being too cute, too shocking, too obnoxious, and so forth, have gone to the same well too often. It's turned into a wall of noise. To some extent, we've all developed TiVo brain.
The guys paying for advertising, the clients, have lost their faith in the effectiveness of advertising. They’re not sure it works like it did in the old millennium. What was once an extremely predictable business has become unpredictable. And, that makes for “scared money.”
Gamblers know -- scared money doesn’t win. Moreover, it’s all because the times have changed under our feet.
Breaking News: We’re no long walking the path of, swimming in the sea of, breathing, I say breathing the air of -- and so forth, metaphorically -- the Postmodern Era.
Part Two of this essay-in-progress is coming soon...
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