Knowledge and information has no impediments today and you can access it via a multitude of channels yet I detect a distinct lack of enthusiasm from many people who would prefer to have it all fed to them rather than experience it themselves.
What was the last book you purchased and read? It’s not a hard question and in my circle of friends and colleagues it usually elicits debate on authors and articles corresponding to their interests.
The reason I ask, I’m concerned about research coming out of the US and Australia about TV watching habits and the lack of books, fiction and nonfiction, selling. It seems we are much more involved in watching Idol and reality shows than reading a newspaper, books or even using the web to access information or read online.
At 192 minutes a day watching TV, Australia still lags behind the US at 277 minutes and the UK at 225 minutes but we are doing everything we can to catch up. The web was seen as a killer for TV but at 40% of total media consumption in Australia, TV still reign’s supreme over everything including the web at 24%. Newspapers and magazines at 3% don’t even hit the radar with books not getting a mention at all. Where do we get our opinions from if not a wide choice of media information? Not from midnight to dawn infomercials that’s for sure.
Revealing statistics in the US show that of the approximately 1.2 million books published annually, 950,000 sell less than 99 copies, 200,000 sell less than 1000 copies and only 25,000 sell more than 5,000 copies. That gives us an average of 500 copies per book published and a future dominated by reality TV and talent shows.
As Seth Godin points out in a recent blog, Hal Varian at Google reports the average web user spends less than 70 seconds reading online newspapers. Do Apple and Rupert Murdoch know this? If people are not reading on their iPads, then what are they using them for? Maybe they’re watching Idol?
Access to information is unlimited nowadays but we seem to be glued to the tube making C grade personalities reality stars and perceptually dumbing down our populace. Some people call this willful ignorance and with this the deliberately uninformed become the norm.
So it remains the domain of the few to influence the many. If you keep reading, creating, influencing and using your mind then maybe, just maybe, you have a chance to bring in some from the Idol wilderness.
No comments:
Post a Comment