Media innovation

Are traditional media really heading for extinction? We asked Moses Znaimer, a pioneer of TV communication who has identified the key new category of so-called “zoomers” and is focused on the harmonious coexistence of old and new media.

We may not realise it but we seem to have taken for granted that traditional media are on the road to extinction, giving way to various online services that will completely replace them. This would be the fate of newspapers, TV, radio, films and books but what if it were not so? Yes, there are many signs in this sense but there are also (authoritative) voices asking us to think again. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos was recently speaking to journalists of The Washington Post, where he has been an editor since 2013. He reminded them that newspapers are crucial for profits and will be around for a long time to come.

Moses Znaimer at the Meet the Media Guru event in Milan

Some go even further and ask us to consider exactly the opposite scenario: what if it were the days of the Internet services that were numbered? Many websites have been very short-lived. Take MySpace, the first social network, hailed as a huge success but today drastically downsized, and Second Life, a 3D online virtual world that it seemed impossible not to visit a few years ago and is today practically deserted. Moses Znaimer is a Canadian TV entrepreneur born in 1942 and was a guest at Maria Grazia Mattei’s “Meet the Media Guru” at the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia in Milan on 18 February last. He believes the same applies to Facebook and asked whether, although Mark Zuckerberg’s service is the dominant format today, might there not be an alternative to the Internet? He added, “Why should we make do with that social network when the whole Internet is available. I personally limit my time on Facebook because I know how much and what data they gather about me and my habits. Having all that knowledge just a click away is like a miracle but there is an exaggerated control over us. I believe there will be violent reactions to all this sooner or later.”

Moses Znaimer is a pioneer of TV communication. Originally from Tajikistan, he started his career at CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and then, in 1972, formed Toronto’s CityTv, a “participatory” TV format with stations set up in several parts of the city where anyone could film a video message and broadcast it, in a sort of YouTube ahead of its time. His great familiarity with the most advanced forms of video communication is what prompts him to say that TV is by no means in decline. Indeed, it is where many protagonists of today’s web would like to arrive: “Vice.com originated as a magazine and a website but has become a TV channel. The Huffington Post has launched a video content channel and BuzzFeed is proposing TV programmes – explains Znaimer. If the boy, the young YouTuber, that one in a million who manages to produce a viral video finds a way to produce and circulate another hugely successful one and then a third, and so on, day after day… What is he doing? Why television!”.

It does not make sense to compare old and new media today: “When the cinema arrived, everyone said it would destroy the theatre, then that TV would kill the cinema and finally that both would be the end of radio. Now, we say that the new media will destroy the traditional media. It simply isn’t true. It is a continuous chain linking all the media suited to different uses, depending on the time of day and the situations we happen to be in. Certainly, we now read newspapers on tablets, watch TV and listen to the radio on computers and smartphones but the reality is that the old media will survive. I, for example, love reading on paper because I like to make notes, underline things and write on the page. You don’t have to reject everything that went before to embrace what’s new.”

According to Znaimer, not even the very young are abandoning traditional media, at least according to data on audiences in Canada, Great Britain and the United States. “The millennials watch TV for about three hours a day and spend about one hour in the virtual world. If you look closely, you will see that Google, Amazon and all the Internet giants advertise on TV. It’s still the principal media for advertising and the one people trust most, far more than they do the Internet and I think they’re right because there are so many risks of online fraud and the falsification of figures and data. Generally speaking, we don’t watch advertising on the Internet, we skip the spots that precede the content we are looking for. At least that’s what I do. I believe we shall have to overcome this phase and that the relationship between old and new media will have to strike a new balance.”

In this study of a new set up, a key role is played by what Znaimer calls “zoomers”, people aged 45 upwards, (baby) boomers with a touch of “zip”, energy, enthusiasm and creativity. Zoomers represent 40% of the Canadian population but few programmes and adverts are designed for them. Znaimer sees this as illogical and, to remedy matters, the Canadian entrepreneur founded ZoomerMedia in Toronto in 2008. It is a company offering paper magazines, TV programmes, radio and multimedia products for iPads, smartphones and computers with one eye on contents that appeal to a no longer young audience and another on the harmonious coexistence of old and new media.

Media innovation

Are traditional media really heading for extinction? We asked Moses Znaimer, a pioneer of TV communication who has identified the key new category of so-called “zoomers” and is focused on the harmonious coexistence of old and new media.

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