Digital Killed The Newspaper Star

As the BUGGLES once sang:

“Video Killed the Radio Star”

When the telephone was being first installed, office businessmen said “I don’t need one of those things – I have messenger boys!”

The radio was supposed to be killed by Television … as well as the movie theaters.

Radio didn’t die – it re-invented itself.

At one time, radio was all live. Playing a record on the air was fought against in courts between the musician unions and the radio industry.

Well within one lifetime ago, radio was the only broadcasting we had. In the 1930s radio sales grew like internet devices are growing today.

The advent of FM almost killed AM radio until talk radio re-invented AM.

The examples go on and on –

It’s not that a media is replaced by another media, the new media causes existing medias to re-invent itself.

However – poor product always kills itself. Such the case of NEWSWEAK
(pun intended) as it now is web only.

Maybe paper IS so 20th century.

Paper books and periodicals will never completely go away. Printing is being reinvented. Printing has been greatly enhanced by the digital age. 1 point tooling line tape used to be a staple in layouts, but once desk top publishing became the norm it was simple to just draw a line on screen.

Bottom line is this –

It wasn’t the tree-huggers that have “saved the trees” … it was the FREE MARKET OF IDEAS that have created this new, exciting digital times that has led to thinner newspapers and magazines.

No more impossible to fold paper maps that were once given out free at any service station.

Soon there will be no more paper textbooks in schools.

Think on this because it is quite significant as an example – Studebaker was the leading horse buggy company in the 19th century.

Category: Tony Rollo Blog