Who is to blame?

Who is to blame? published on 2 Comments on Who is to blame?

Very recently, I was lucky enough to be able to have lunch with Larry Katzman.
Larry (or as he is known professionally – “Kaz”) is the world’s leading cartoonist of medical humor. His Nurse Nellie cartoons have appeared in newspapers and magazines in 21 countries and were awarded the highest prize in international cartooning at the 19th International Salon of Humor in Bordighera, Italy. His book collections have sold over three million copies.

Kaz was active during the “golden age” of cartoonists when they were able to live pretty much a Rockstar life selling cartoons to publications such as the New Yorker. During this era, he was hanging out with other cartoonists such as Mort Walker, Milton Caniff, Will Eisner and Peter Arno.

Among the many interesting stories he told during lunch, one thing he said really caught me.
Kaz was talking about the gradual decline of the glory days of cartooning. He told how at first, gag cartoons would earn their creators the equivalent of around $100 per comic. (About $800 per comic in today’s terms). Soon, though, the magazines that were buying the cartoons started to reduce page count and began folding.

The reason for this was blamed on the Television being invented & eventually being available in every home.
The magazine, which was once a main source of information & entertainment, was neglected and languished in an unread pile, as the household began to instead crowd around a screen to get their information updates.
Soon, subscription rates and reader numbers declined and advertising revenue was diverted to the new media of Television.
This then forced magazines to close their doors as they became unsustainable.

Does any of that sound familiar?
When I heard it, I though immediately of the present situation that book stores and newspapers are going through.
They have been trumped by the ‘new media’ of the online platforms and have found themselves in hard times.
The situation is a direct copy of the one faced by magazines during the 50’s.

And I am sure the cycle will not stop there. At some point in the near future, even online media will face a decline in usage, as a new ‘new media’ presents itself and takes hold. And the media platform that replaces it will be blamed for the death of online.
It is just a matter of time, so rather than complain about it and try to claw people back to an ‘older’ media, businesses should spend some time to stop and look at new media platforms. Spend more than a week trying to understand  them, and begin looking to see how they can expand what they offer to keep consumers as they begin the slow transition across.

 

This has been another “agent-x”atorial

 

 

Virtual Fighter

Virtual Fighter published on 2 Comments on Virtual Fighter

You can level up in a game, but not in real life.

If you play games a lot, you need to remember the following things:

  • Just because you are the most awesome guitarist in Guitar Hero, it does not mean you can automatically rock out on the real thing.
  • If you can get the lowest stroke count in Wii Golf, then don’t think you can join the PGA tour.
  • Resident evil is not a training film to help you handle the pending Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Wasting all the bad guys in Splinter Cell will not make you a master of espionage.

Oddly though, Mario Kart WILL teach you how to drive. Go on – Give it a go!

Wayback Machine

Wayback Machine published on 7 Comments on Wayback Machine

Don’t you love when grandparents re-invent history?

But it won’t be long until some of us start reminiscing about the good old days and creating stories about how life worked before everything was online.

I know some people that even do it now.
They sit around and tell us about how good things were before everyone was distracted by facebook, twitter and iphones.
Yup, in the good old days all they had to keep them amused were video games, IRC chats, Rubiks cubes, messageboards and web-rings…..

Missing

Missing published on 6 Comments on Missing

How many of these people do you know?

I know too many of these kinds of people and I discover more and more of them online every day.
Abandoned foursquare accounts, half-hearted facebook profiles and twitter accounts that have not been touched since the end of 2009 when twitter was the “next big thing”.

I believe that the average everyday “person on the street” from the age of 25 upwards, still does not really “get” online social media.
They merely partake so they can be a part of the excitement that the news media tells them is occurring.

The internet is already full of abandoned sites, forums and message boards.
They are the online ghost towns just taking up file space and providing virtual rubbish for future generations to clean up in years to come.