The End of Legacy Media (Newspapers, Magazines, Books, TV Networks)
August 23, 1998
Most current media formats will die and be replaced with an integrated Web medium in five to ten years.
Legacy media cannot survive because the current media landscape is an artifact of the underlying hardware technology. Whenever the user experience is dictated by hardware limitations, it is a sure bet that something better will come along once these limitations are lifted.
Why are traditional media separate? Why do you have to chose between either
•seeing moving images of an event on TV
•reading the full story in the newspaper
•reading a reflective analysis of the underlying issues in a magazine
Why not all three in a single medium? And why not link the coverage to archival information from an encyclopedia, an atlas, biographies of the people involved, historical novels that bring the relevant countries' past to life, and many more books?
The answer is obvious: You can't screen a film clip in print, you can't broadcast a long article on television, the newspaper presses don't wait for weeks' worth of research for the reflective story, and it would be too expensive to send magazine subscribers a small library of books just in case they wanted deeper background information.
In other words, current hardware prevents true media integration. Even so, there have been attempts: Newspapers often include a Sunday magazine and the better ones assign reporters to work for long periods of time to research and write extensive background articles that go far beyond yesterday's news. Sometimes books are rushed to print to cash in on public interest in a high-profile event.
