Content is King

Before radio, amateur entertainers strolled around town performing on street corners for fun and profit The best of them became troubadours who walked from town to town to entertain the people they found. They would immediately set up a makeshift stage and sing their songs or tell their stories. They even told about the news in the other towns from which they traveled. But if you were not there you missed the show. As the quality troubadours gained recognition they were able to obtain wagons which doubled as portable stages and their performances were able to reach more and more towns and cities on a regular basis. Crowds would form when the show would spontaneously begin. Not long after that cities began to build performance spaces and the performers would only have to arrive to deliver their performance at the appointed time. The public could schedule their time for leisure pursuits. The best shows were sought after and the scarcity of tickets made them rate higher than the other vaudeville acts.

Along comes radio, (and eventually television). The medium is flooded with amateurs with the best intentions. The clever performers realized that they could stay in one place and let the performance do the traveling. So, quality performances were produced and presented to an audience who got entertainment and news without leaving their homes. Quality entertainment is available without travel, of the entertainer or the audience and at a prescribed schedule. People organized their time to be available for the broadcast. The shows with the best quality rated highest.

So now there is the Internet. The medium is flooded with amateurs with the best intentions. The best entertainment and news is sought after. People can't get enough. Clever producers have realized for a long time the audiences will gather wherever the quality is. People like quality entertainment so much they capture it so they can take it with them. They will take their entertainment wherever they go. Audiences are no longer tied to time and space. Infotainment can touch every human where ever and when ever they are. Leisure time is no longer linear. People relax between their multiple tasks.

Audiences have much from which to choose. In the short term the novelty of the medium is enough to quench the public's desire for entertainment. But in rapid order it will be the best entertainment which will capture the largest audience share. Producers with the insight to see this history will be the ones who dominate the new medium. The question had never been where to perform but rather what to perform. If there is a compelling story the public will find it. Prior to the internet age the story was told over and over from place to place. We have evolved through the message being placed in one spot, where audiences will come to it, to a time when the message is released and the audience will catch it and consume it when they are ready. Now, in the internet age, that story will wait, with it's sponsors, for the audience, who will carry it into the future.