This Week’s Insights: Fast-forward Netflix movies?… Should bookstores charge admission?… So many streamers, too much choice… The end of the Golden Age of TV… What the point of a library?
- Department of Let-The-Consumer-Define-Their-Experience, Part I: Netflix says it will introduce a feature that audiobooks have offered for a while now – the ability to speed up or slow down playback of video. So you can double-time through “Seinfeld” perhaps? Presumably this is for people who just want to get through things in an efficient way, but movie producers are appalled at the idea. Many of them are already not happy that their movies are shrunk down to TVs, phone or tablet screens, believing that they should be seen in theatres on the big screen as intended. But consumers have shown they’re more interested in convenience and portability than being in theatres. The question: Is this smart audience strategy giving the consumer what they want or does it ultimately compromise the art form?
- Department of Let-The-Consumer-Define-Their-Experience, Part II – Should Bookstores Charge Admission: Many is the reader who go to bookstores for entertainment, browsing the shelves, trying out a book or two. In recent years bookstores have tried to make themselves more alluring, cultivating communities of readers. So would it make sense to charge a small fee for admission? Why not monetize the intangibles? The Strand, and stores like it, could charge an admission fee. Something token, like a dollar. For a buck, you’re granted access to everything the store has to offer. You can browse to your heart’s delight. There’s no pressure to make a purchase. Sounds risky, when you are trying to encourage as many customers as possible to come in. On the other hand, if it really were a small fee and people felt they were supporting the experience?
- Streaming Is About To Get Very Messy (And Expensive): Dozens of streaming services are coming online. In a couple of weeks, you’ll have so many options to pay for content à la carte, you won’t really know where to start. And yes, you’ll be paying extra for the inconvenience. Apple is first out, with its new service and a raft of high profile shows. But with each streamer turning out original series and movies, it will be hard to decide which services you want to subscribe to. And more and more expensive. All of which will mean that our a la carte access will mean we won’t have access to some of the shows we might be interested in. Ah, but it was so much simpler in the old days of cable TV bundles.
- The Explosion Of Streaming Will Bring The Golden Age Of TV To A Close: The Golden Age of TV, the halcyon period that dates from the premiere of The Sopranos in January 1999, has been drawing to a close for a while now, but as the streamers lay out their plans for the 21st century’s third decade, it’s increasingly clear that it’s well over. Streamers are spending big on content, but as audiences for these various services fragment, it will be more and more impossible to support the cost. And with each streamer in effect erecting walls around their content, it means content will fragment, appealing to more and more niche audiences.
- What’s The Point Of A Public Library? Interesting piece in the Baffler. Libraries have done a fascinating job of reinventing themselves in the digital age. So what now is really their purpose? “If public libraries are not for the rich, they probably are not otherwise for the poor. To understand the public library as a benevolent form of welfare would be to entirely miss the radical potential of the institution as a political project. It isn’t utopian, nor is about culturing the masses, nor offering the marginalized a space where they mustn’t ‘pay for coffee’.”
Leave a Reply