The Media Pyramid & Eventness
To the left is a basic representation of what I call The Media Pyramid.
I’ve developed the Pyramid as a lens through which to understand the different kinds of media and how they relate to each other, particularly in terms of how we consume them cognitively.
The Media Pyramid splits into three sections:
1) The yellow bit at the top represents eventful media and culture — concerts, plays, movies, plays, debates — that people watch together at the same time and in the same place.
2) The red center represents somewhat less eventful media and culture that people consume at the same time but NOT at the same place: real-time radio, TV and live web events.
3) The blue base represents uneventful on-demand media that people commonly watch by themselves. This is the fastest growing section of The Media Pyramid, so as you imagine it you should think of it pushing its way inexorably upward.
Note: it’s probably easier to see what I’m talking about by looking at this deck, part of a presentation that I’ve been noodling for the last several months.
Regular Mediavorous readers will recognize “Eventness” as a key concept for my thinking about media: eventness is a rough translation of sobytiinost’– a Bakhtinian term about the unrepeatable qualities of events that happen in real time and sometimes space with other people, as opposed to the endless repeatability of watching on-demand media alone.
Once, all cultural experiences that happened in real time (this leaves reading at one’s own pace out of the equation) were eventful because there were no forms of duplication and mass production of media or culture. With no phonograph or iPod, if you wanted music you had to play it yourself or pay for it. Stephen Booth, a Shakespearean, has observed that this explains why the clown Stephano in “The Tempest” has as a key benefit of killing Prospero and taking over the island the notion that, “This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing.”
Today, the yellow tip of the pyramid is shrinking quickly, with the red center right at its heels.
I don’t think that the inexorable upward push by the blue base is set in stone– that’s one of the reasons why I’m so excited about the arrival of companies like Joost, but more on that later.
One Response to “The Media Pyramid & Eventness”
1 Tom Hespos 24 January 2008 @ 11:28 am
Whenever I’ve heard “eventness” discussed as a concept, something experienced by a bunch of people simultaneously is typically referred to as a “shared experience.” Aside from a few television programs (The Super Bowl, Final episodes of popular TV shows) and real-life events (major news stories), we really don’t have too many of these anymore. That said, I don’t think simultaneous consumption is necessary to share an experience, nor do I think asynchronous consumption necessarily takes away from shared experiences. (Think Numa Numa and a bunch of other Internet memes.)
That said, I think there’s no substitute for in-person simultaneous consumption. By way of example, I’d rather go to the Van Halen concert at MSG with three of my friends than have three friends over to watch it on Pay-Per-View. I don’t know that technology will ever get us to the point where a true shared experience can be replicated.
People probably want to be in the yellow zone, but technology keeps them stuck in the blue zone. We may not be able to connect with people in person, but we can have the next best thing in this day and age of busy schedules.
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