Every day after grade school, instead of watching MTV or reruns of sitcoms, I would watch the local news with my parents. Looking back, I was quite the model child. I sure was a well-informed 10-year-old.
These days, things have changed. (Except I still am a model child).
I get home from school, check my e-mail, Facebook, Myspace, GoogleNews, and then I log on to Youtube.com to see the top videos of the day. Screw local news, I want to watch a lizard scare the crap out of an anchor man over and over.
Recent polls have shown that the TV News niche audience of the 35-64 age group are the most common Youtube.com audience. What's not clear is whether they are getting their local news through Youtube, or are they just watching people bite it on a bicycle? Whatever the reason, the men in ties and toupees in newsrooms feel threatened.
Is Youtube taking the place of TV news? I do not thinks it is. It is just providing another way for humans to kill time, which in turn does take away SOME of the news niche audience. And that's too bad. Though we are becoming an "On-Demand" society, I think there is something that is unique and special about experiencing the same thing at the same time. No one in my parent's generation will forget seeing the breaking news of Kennedy's assassination. The nation grieved simultaneously, and that is something Youtube cannot give.
On the other hand, in a time of war, I think a lot of people are turning to Youtube to find out what is REALLY happening in Iraq. TV news these days seems to tell us what we want to hear. American soldiers in Iraq are becoming journalists in their own right. Countless videos of soldier's first person perspectives can be found on the site. This is the news we DON'T see on TV, and frankly that is more interesting to a lot of people, including me.
I like the point about how were are losing the shared experience. But I think that died not with YouTube but with Cable TV. Back in your parents' day there were only three or four channels you could get and only 13 VHF channels on the dial when you bought the TV.
Very true, but even with basic cable you still had the opportunity for simultaneous viewing with programs like CNN. You felt the togetherness of the country watching coverage of 9/11 and Columbine. But I think that recently with TIVO, On Demand television, youtube, this is taking away that experience and putting news time in the hands of the audience.
Nice post. You need to add a cutline and credit for the image. See me if you don't know how.