Gravity Medium

If it seems like the world moves faster, technologically, with each passing year, you’re not imagining things.

Consider this chart:

Starting from its introduction, the simple telephone took 71 years to arrive in just 50% of American homes. Think about that. An entire generation was born, lived and died waiting for a telephone to arrive in their home, and only half of them got it!

Even electricity took 52 years to reach 50% of homes. Cell phones — that ubiquitous device most of us take for granted — took 14 years, but the MP3 player took less than half that time.

Basic Internet access — the new omnimedia connection — took 10 years to reach 50%, and in the early days it wasn’t even that much to talk about. Today, high-speed Internet access is in well over 50% of homes in the U.S. and average speeds are rising (though not fast enough for me).

There are two lessons here I can see:

1. We cannot be transmitter companies (and indeed, we never were — we just thought we were because it was easier that way). Technology is a tool, not a purpose.
2. The public naturally innovates as better tools arrive for information gathering, sharing and entertainment. We must innovate with them to serve them; innovation must be built into our DNA.

What other lessons can you see in this chart?

A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. –Wayne Gretzky

Found via Lost Remote, this Idaho Radio News post includes one of the funniest (and saddest) send-ups of local news promotions in commercial media.

• Sweeps Can KILL You (MP3, about 2 minutes)

Can you imagine a public radio or public television station doing a promo like this? Of course not — it’s the polar opposite of the public media ethos.

Perhaps one of the ways to define public service media going forward is to declare what we are not.

If there were an Academy Awards of mission statements or manifestos, Louisville Public Media’s introduction would take top honors in all categories for a public media company.

Luckily Todd Mundt blogged it at his own site, or I would have missed it.

For anyone that cares about the future of public media, this is required reading, even if you read nothing else this year. It sums up the challenges and the opportunities for local public media in one succinct document. It nails the methods (in broad strokes, of course) and attitudes required for a public service company that uses media to connect people to one another, to issues and information and so on.

Even the logo matches the mission — no small task.

Upon reading this intro, I immediately forwarded it to my fellow managers. Next it will go to our board, who will hopefully embrace it as part of a rather gut-wrenching strategic planning process. Fortunately this one-page explanation is based in media reality and explains how we can, indeed, serve our community in the evolving world.

My Questions

• Who participated in writing this introduction?
• In a high-level summary, what steps were taken to reach this strategic point?
• How hard was it for the PRP to reach the LPM conclusion? Were there roadblocks?
• How do you feel about plagiarism?

Perhaps I could coax Todd — or someone else — to help answer these questions? I’ll definitely try.

Just in case the introduction is ever taken down, I’ve included it below for safe keeping — after the jump.

In the mean time, congratulations to Louisville Public Media.

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