The Washington Post is trying to troll me. On the 17th of February the op-ed pages contained two articles, both on the same subject. One by David Broder and one by Robert Novak . Both represented extreme examples of partisanship. They are trolling me, if I am left I get trolled by Novak, if I am right I get trolled by Broder. If I am centre - I am still trolled - because I whinge about it on other websites . I have been trolled.

There is no doubt mass media is getting segmented and marginalised. Content is becoming more distributed and less concentrated courtesy of decentralised data networks. So what is the future of mass media? Will it devolve into a troll-fest, desperately seeking eyeballs through Adequacy like provocation?

Integrity and Quality of Mass Media

The American cable channels have based their rise on confrontational political shows that are more shouting and arguing than rational debate or political discourse. Due to the need for conflict the antoganists on these shows are overtly partisan and extremely polarised. It hard to get centrists to argue, they are too reasonable for starters. Crossfire recently got challenged by American satirist, Jon Stewart [Video]. The irony being that the viewers of Stewart's comedy satire show are more informed about politics than the viewers of the dedicated political show - Crossfire.

The newspaper op-eds are devolving into the same combatorial and partisan style. In an effort to get more eyeballs and increase circulation they are essentially trolling their audience with extreme views. Many Australian political writers such as Miranda Devine, Margot Kingston, Robert Sheehan, Mike Carlton, Gerard Henderson etc are using this style.

It is a device to double your audience. Often they are little more than extreme rants or ad-hominems, taken from a single fact, and then spun into an extreme viewpoint. It is designed to make those who want an echo-chamber nod their heads in agreement and then write into the newspaper how much they agree with so-and-so.

It is also designed to provoke outrage in those that don't agree with the extremist view. The outraged people then write into the paper to say how outraged they are. The newspaper goes woohoo, it just doubled its eyeballs and consequently its ability to inflate its circulation numbers when they sell advertising space.

The op-ed pages are trolling . As many websites have found out, trolling is not sustainable and drives people away when they can take it no longer.

To The Web

The businesses which run newspapers are finding that their advertising revenue is dwindling from their dead-tree publishing concerns. One reason is that many on the web are giving away superior content for free. My browsing patterns in the morning are true to that. I subscribe to one newspaper, but each day I check several community websites, and several blogs multiple times. The newspaper gets my eyeballs once, but many websites get my eyeballs several times through the day and night.

Online advertising revenue is eclipsing dead-tree based revenue. Recently The New York Times Company bought About.com for 400 million USD. This is not occurring in isolation;

The deal is the latest example of major media companies buying up Internet properties to increase their exposure to the fast-growing online advertising business. Recently, Washington Post Co. bought the online magazine Slate from Microsoft . Earlier this year, Dow Jones completed its acquisition of financial news publisher MarketWatch.

The newspaper companies supply the content and the place for advertising. The new advertising companies, do not supply content. Google for instance had revenues of $2.1 billion from advertising in 2004. By comparison the New York Times Company had advertising revenues of $1.4 billion in 2004. The core component of dead-tree media is being overtaken by an advertising company that does not create content.

TV and Radio

The newspapers are the first to feel the new technology as the cost of publishing the written word has dropped to zero. A website with a unique URL can be maintained for less than $100 USD a year. A blogsite can be had for $0. With nothing more than an internet connection and an email address a content creator can be up and publishing within minutes. It only takes a bit more effort to add revenue making capabilities to that content through vehicles like AdSense and Blogads .

As broadband becomes ubiquitous and investment in infra-structure continues, enabling high data flow rates, radio will be the next to come under pressure. Already the underground beginnings are appearing. Podcasting is growing in popularity as people record and broadcast their own broadcasts through mp3 and RSS. The barriers to entry in having a radio broadcast are huge. There is the license for the station, the studio, the towers etc etc etc. All that is needed for a podcast is a PC and a website.

Another disruptive technology is putting pressure on TV and will ultimately change the way TV is broadcast, sold and marketed. Bit-torrent is a remarkable piece of technology that distributes the download of a file across a network. Each person downloading the file also contributes to the uploading as well. In this manner a 50 Gb download may only incur the cost of 5Gb of bandwidth from the original seeder. Compare this to ftp/http where the hoster of the content is subject to the full cost of 50Gbs of bandwidth.

Broadcast Delays

The big issue with TV is that there is a delay between countries for when it is broadcast. Since the US usually gets to view them first, it is no surprise that the viewers in the UK and Australia take issues into their own hands ;

New Envisional figures about to be released show Britain leads the world in piracy. We are responsible for 38.4% of TV downloads in the EU and 18.5% worldwide. Australia is second with 15.6% and the US a poor third on 7.3%. The reason is simple. The pirated programmes are mainly made in English by US companies and released earlier there than here.

Battlestar Galactica is a hugely popular show that was first broadcast in the UK. Consequently Americans have been downloading the Battlestar Galactica episodes furiously in order to satiate their desire to see the story through. This reinforces the adage, that content is king.

All manner of copyright infringement legislation is being introduced by government, led by the US Congress. Copyright infringement, once a civil issue between infringer and content owner is now a criminal issue and carries punitive measures. The lobby organisations such as the RIAA and MPAA have undertaken "public education" campaigns to attempt to equate copyright infringement with theft.

Unfortunately government has been duplicitous. The Australian-American Free Trade Agreement requires Australia to adopt many copyright infringement laws that equate to the DMCA in the United States. Australia is also required to increase the term limits on copyright - a number which can historically be expected to increase the next time Mickey Mouse comes close to falling out of copyright.

It is difficult not to view the imposition of legislation as an attempt by a horse and buggy industry, knowing that they are being surpassed by a disruptive technology, to hold on to their cartel like revenue and profit. This lobbying for legislation is a static industry seeking a rent, rather than innovating to the new possibilities that the new technology offers.

What Then For News/TV/Radio

Podcasting is an example of what will happen to television as well. Whatever the device is that allows tv to be viewed on the go, then people will produce their own TV-casts for that device. Pornography will probably lead the way there. Radio will also be democratized and those who podcast with the talent to gain a large enough audience will make a living from advertising on their podcasts - same as talented bloggers do.

TV and Radio will be limited a cinema like existence where they are reliant on blockbusters. TV may hold on longer through broadcasting live events, such as sport. But last year in the US ESPN dabbled with broadcasting several World Cup Hockey matches exclusively through the internet. They couldn't handle the bandwidth, but it is an example of what may happen in the future.

TV and Radio are also dependent upon the monopoly on spectrum they get from the government. It is another rent. With diverse media popping up through higher speed data networks, there will come a time when that spectrum can be reclaimed.

Opening Up The Spectrum

When I was working in the New Jersey area in the Wireless division of an American company during the late 90s, we got brochures from the Australian Government advertising the auction of spectrum in Australia. Soon after I watched on Australian television the CEO of Telstra laughing about the auctions while claiming that they could drive the price up so high that non-established players would be over-capitalised and debt-laden, ie unable to compete with an entrenched monopoly.

The example of 802.x shows what wonderful things come from liberalising spectrum. Mass media is dangerous because of its concentration of content creators and management who edits those content creators. We would be far better served by adding more voices to the media mix and removing the monopoly on media that mass media largely has. Existing disruptive technologies point the way.

To tip the apple cart further, the government should open up more of the spectrum to the public. This spectrum should be unencumbered by overt and lengthy regulation. This will spur new investment in Australia, into new technologies and new means of the Australian people interacting through these open technologies. It will also offer the possibility of Australia gaining a comparative advantage in these areas through being unique in opening up these areas.

More importantly it will give Australian people and Australian business the opportunity to innovate - maybe even change our view of ourselves and the world. Innovation is always a good thing. Allowing the people to innovate without Government regulation and Government enforced private rents will only spur that innovation to new heights.

It is beyond time to open up more, if not all, of the spectrum to the public.

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