Mobile > internet if tv > radio

1 March 2007 by Rod McLaren

In summarising Tomi Ahonen’s Mobile the 7th Mass Media is to internet like TV is to radio for del.icio.us’s brutal 256 character limit, I somewhat rudely said:

Confusing: mobile defended against internet-is-better claims by appeal to essential diffs betw media; claim then made that mobile inherently better than other media. Result: headline is read with opposite meaning to intended.

(Sorry Tomi, that was a bit blunt wasn’t it.) He asked for a clarification of my confusion, thereby proving that I was being no less confusing than I’d just accused him of being. So here we are:

In brief, I don’t think the content is too confusing, but the headline was for me. If you don’t believe that tv is inherently better than radio (I don’t), then the sentence “mobile as the 7th mass media is as much superior to the internet, as TV is to radio” means exactly the opposite of that intended. I read the headline and first sentence and thought: great, Tomi’s making the point that none of these media are inherently better than each other in sum, and is going to discuss how the media are inherently different from and yet often complementary to each other, sometimes cannibalising of and yet sometimes amplifying of each other. Because obviously (to me at least), neither of the internet or mobile are “better than” each other, they’re good at different things, uses etc. And obviously, tv isn’t “better than” radio, they’re different to each other, and do different things well. So this was my first point of confusion.

So I had completely misunderstood what he was saying. Tomi’s saying the opposite: that tv is better than radio, and mobile is better than the internet.

Tomi went on, rightly defending mobile against accusations that “mobile is no good for consuming the internet, therefore internet is better than mobile” (I’m paraphrasing here) by noting that they’re different media, have different uses, provide services, opportunities and interactions in different ways.

And then Tomi delivers a magnificent and entertaining polemic in favour of mobile, presenting the unique qualities and characteristics of mobile (many of which I agree with: personal, always-on, always-carried, easy payment and creative/capture mechanisms), concluding that this makes mobile the best of the seven mass media. But his previous defence would be equally arguable in reverse: that these mobile qualities, though excellent, don’t make the six preceding mass media (print, recorded audio, movies, radio, tv and internet) inferior to mobile, merely different because they have qualities that mobile doesn’t.

I do mean that mobile is inherently superior to the (legacy, ie PC based) internet. I do mean that the mobile as a mass media is also different from the web (and TV) as we know it. I don’t see these as inherent contraditions.

he says; now maybe I’m a locked in a relativist loop, but it does seem to me that the second claim of essential differences complicates the first, that mobile is inherently better. I keep wondering about that “better”, and not understanding it. And that’s my second point of confusion.

Dean Bubley makes the point on Forum Oxford (you need to be registered) that the internet hooks into the non-media worlds of IT and B2B in a way that mobile hasn’t yet and may not. I’d add that the internet is also doing two further things that mobile isn’t yet and may not: firstly, it’s doing a good job of dissolving itself into the other media, becoming either the means of integration behind the scenes, or the means of consumption. Secondly, the internet seems to be doing a better job at the moment of driving disruptive innovation into the other media, including mobile.

Whilst there are some obvious examples of mass media cannibalism at work (the internet is eating the print classifieds market, mobile is eating the cheap camera market, etc), it seems to me that a stronger trend is the smearing together of media: “watching video content” is an activity no longer owned by broadcast tv, “real-time voice communication” is no longer owned by fixed and mobile telephony and so on. Thus whilst mobile is great, I don’t see it as the bigger fish that is better than the others.

Often, mobile is at its greatest when it complements other activities I’m already involved in. I find it amplifies the utility of the internet for me. My BlackBerry amplifies email and IM for me, though it has displaced my home phone completely. Timeshifting and the internet has mostly displaced broadcast tv for me, yet the video content I watch online is more valuable to me than it was before. The internet and mobile in particular are good at allowing us to perform tasks in different ways, or to connect activities together, or to enrich them with different human contexts (interestingly, radio doesn’t allow us to “perform many tasks”, but remains an incredibly valuable medium for me).

So my conclusion is that the media are messy to the point that I’m not really sure if there are seven mass media, that they’re still magnificent, that none are better than any other in toto, though admittedly some are better at replicating various the qualities of the others. I agree with Tomi that “mobile is not a ‘small internet’, it is a NEW mass media. As different from the internet as TV is from radio”, and to a certain extent with his “mobile adds five elements not possible on the previous six mass media,” but not with his conclusion “making the mobile the inherently superior mass media”.

Tomi’s a great evangelist for mobile, but I’m not so interested in which media are better than others. I’m more interested in seeing some exploration of how mobile makes other mass media better when it touches them. And I still think the most value (vague term, that) is where the internet touches mobile, where they both touch people in meaningful ways.

Long live the net and mobile and books and…! Long live Tomi Ahonen!

(major bias caveat: these are merely the comments of a mid-30s European male who loves the internet and mobile, and has broadband. Image of The Big Fish Eat The Little Ones, 1557, After Brueghel, is from the NY Met Museum.)

1. Hi Rod and readers of the Mobbu blogsite

   Thank you for the extended explanation. You make very good sense and in very many ways I agree with you. Obviously not with all, but now I also fully understand why the confusion.

   Yes, I was making the assumption that the reader thinks TV is now the dominant mass media. And agrees with me, that TV took this dominant position from radio, the previous dominant mass media in the 1930s and 1940s.

   So if you don’t buy that – and think radio is about as good (or even better) than TV, then yes, my headline suggests a very different conclusion to what I argue in the text. I fully understand your confusion. Thank you for explaining it.

   Now. First point. I would argue, that out of its relative influence to society, TV does dwarf radio. It is much more expensive (on average) and our value judgements, of how much we spend on our TV versus on our radio, gives one indication of how much the average person values TV more than radio.

   Another is total time spent consuming its content. TV is consumed at about twice the total consumption (in hours watched or listened weekly). I would also argue that the influence is seen in society. Once radio was the rebel, Elvis, Beatles would “break through” via radio. But today unless you’re a big celebrity hit on TV (and versus radio, especially MTV) then you really aren’t that relevant. Compare in America for example Howard Stern vs David Letterman or Jay Leno. Yes Howard has a big audience, but come on, he doesn’t rank in the 50 most powerful men in media…

   But yes, your view is quite valid, and of course for many people radio is as important – or indeed more important than TV. I can now think of one of my ex-girlfriends for example, who didn’t watch TV at all.

   But stay with me. Lets not consider the “quality” of the medium in which is “better” but rather a “crude” measure of money and societal influence. TV alone is bigger than global movies, recordings, newspapers, magazines, books and radio, combined. It towers in its industry over radio. This is the “power” that I meant. Once radio did have that degree of power and influence in society. But TV appeared as the newest media and in 20 years pushed radio aside, becoming the “dominant” mass media.

   But yes, TV did not kill radio.

   This is the analogy I am suggesting. And I am dead serious about it. The internet today is a bigger influence in society than mobile (data services, obviously if we add mobile voice, then mobile telecoms is many times bigger than the total internet AND PC industry ha-ha).

   So today, the situation is similar to what radio had in the 1940s. It could see a new rival, TV, appearing, but was the dominant mass media.

   Today the internet as a mass media can see the infancy of mobile. By the reasons that I give in my blog, I do mean, that the mobile mass media will rapidly grow past the legacy internet, in revenues, time spent, societal influence and importance to us consumers.

   This has already happened in the two most digitally advanced (and highest penetration broadband) countries – Japan and South Korea, as well as China. And the early signs are definite that this is the trend in Scandinavia, Italy, Israel, Singapore, Hogn Kong, etc, the second tier advanced markets. This is why I am so convinced it will happen everywhere.

   I want to be clear still – there are many service concepts (media formats if you will) which work better on the internet than on mobile. The internet will not die. The internet will continue to grow in importance for many years still.

   But mobile will bypass the internet – AND bypass TV – to become the biggest mass media in the world. Why? First of all, because it is the first media where the full audience is known. Because it is the first media with a built-in payment mechanism. These two elements guarantee that all media owners WANT their content onto phones.

   The BBC director general (former) Greg Dyke said TV will go mobile. Not IPTV, mobile. Edgar Bronfman the CEO of Warner music said music will go mobile. Not iPods/web. Mobile. The new CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt said the internet is going mobile. The VP of Sony Pictures (movies) – I forget his name now, said hollywood will go mobile. Every media wants to be on mobile because of the audience (reach, 2.7 billion) and its measurement accuracy, AND the money.

   Toss in the trend of user-generated content, and again mobile trumps the internet. Immediacy and ease, straight from the phone to Flickr, MySpace, YouTube. Ideally with one click, like on Cyworld in South Korea where more videoclips are uploaded to Cyworld than in America onto YouTube. This even though South Korea has one sixth the population of the USA.

   Ok, enough of my pitch, you get my point. Thanks very much Rod for commenting on this here. I’ll also go over to Forum Oxford if you have the discussion there, to comment as well. I really appreciate it that you took the time, and you are very correct. I made a mistake in my assumption that everybody would share the view that TV is the dominant mass media today. If that belief is not shared, my title does indeed suggest the opposite finding of what I then argue in the text. Sorry about that :)

   Tomi Ahonen :)

   
   — Tomi T Ahonen    2 March 2007, 03:09    #

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