Mainstream media’s collapse

If you want to see the stunning ways America’s entertainment and media habits have changed, check out Mainstream Media Meltdown over on The Long Tail. Besides the continuing collapse of newspaper circulating, all the other mainstream media forms are in serious decline.
The Internet, podcasting, video on demand, personal music and video players are all contributing factors but I think a changed society where we all live such jam-packed schedules is of equal cause.
Our time is too valuable to be wasted by drivel.
Take the other day, for example. I do a regular technology report for an FM radio station in Detroit. We tape the segment a few days before but I’ve never heard it air. The other day, I happened to be in the car on the way somewhere when the time for my report approached.
I tuned in to try and catch it and, for ten minutes, heard one song and two commercial breaks of seven and eight commercials each. They were loud, irritating and innane and so painful to sit through that I ended up turning the station off before arriving at my desitnation and before my spot came on.
Now if commericals are so irritating that I won’t even wait hear myself, what about others?
That’s radio. TV commercials are the same. I can’t honestly remember the last time I sat through a local TV news broadcast, that’s how irritating and irrlevant they have become with their promos and ads. Watching commercial-free video on my iPod or through Comcast’s On-Demand is much less painful.
I can understand, too, why newspaper circulation is down. In an instant, multimedia Internet world, getting news online, also on demand, is much more useful than reading day-old news in a printed newspaper. That’s why so  many newspapers are frantically trying to reinvent themselves and  beefing up their Internet offerings.
Music sales are down, too. The Internet is again the reason why.
Magazines are totally irrelevant, unless they are highly specialized and niche driven. Even then, the Net is a better outlet.
So all these trends don’t really concern me. I think the Net will fill the void in the way we get and consume news and entertainment just fine.
One thing depresses me: The drop in book sales. We just don’t read much anymore, I guess. That’s the byproduct of all these changes and one area I don’t see the Net providing a more efficient alternative.
Technology has made us too impatient to sit down and read. We’ve lost the habit.