MaxxoMedia Digital Media and Entertainment Trends

“You know when I was your age I had to get up off the couch and turn a knob on the TV to change the channels!” I say to my son of 11 years. “Awww come on dad – stop making up stories,” he replies. “No really, and we only had three channels that came in halfway decent – don’t get me started about the ‘rabbit ears.’ I know it sounds crazy, but we had to wait for our favorite shows to come on at the time shown in the TV Guide magazine.” “The what?” he says with a quizzical look on his face. “If we wanted to listen to music we had to put a record on the record player or wait for it to come on the radio. Phone calls meant waiting for the single house line or calling from a payphone.” More quizzical looks. “Our video games were one dimensional and we only had one button to press to kill the aliens. And if we wanted to take a picture we had to take the roll of film to be developed, make prints and mail them to our friends and family.”

Boy have times changed! The digital media revolution has begun in earnest and the evolving habits of children today will have a profound effect on media companies large and small all around the world. Unlike when we were growing up, our kids have access to media and entertainment at their fingertips 24 hours a day. Almost anything they want (audio and visual), coupled with with new ways of communicating and sharing both information and experiences can be found on the Internet and increasingly on cell phones, advanced cable and IP networks and satellite. These kids are going to challenge media companies with an ever growing demand for accessibility wherever and whenever they want in the format and at the price they wish to pay. These demands will drive media companies to develop new proficiencies and efficiencies in digital content management and distribution to support the myriad of formats that will be required to feed the demand or miss the boat with these consumers.

For a focus group of one, let’s take a look at my son’s digital lifestyle:

Video/TV

We’ve got DirecTV that comes with an on screen programming guide and a PVR that records up to 100 hours of programs. But instead of turning on the TV my son first logs his laptop onto Nick.com for short video clips and games from his favorite shows. Or any time he wants to check out a full length episode of Fairly Odd Parents, The Office or almost any other show he can think of, he heads over to Daily Motion. When he does want to watch the TV, he checks the list of recorded programs on the PVR first and replays them on his schedule (yes, fast forwarding through the commercials).
Music

My parents had a cabinet full of records when I was growing up. I would spend hours flipping through 12″ albums checking out the covers and reading the liner notes. We had one of those all in one stereo hi-fi players with integrated cassette. Today, you have to look pretty hard to find a CD in our house. About a year ago, I ripped everything we owned onto a 250GB networked hard drive. If a new CD is purchased I honestly don’t know where it ends up after it makes its way to the storage drive. Now my son plugs his iPod into the storage drive, or he heads to iTunes to download some new tracks or video podcasts from Nickelodeon. Or he uses the sharing function in iTunes and streams the music to his laptop wherever he is in the house. If he wants to watch music videos he usually starts with YouTube or AOL Music. We also have a Rhapsody account to listen and explore music on demand.

Internet and eMail

His web home page is YahooKids, a cool ‘in beta’ service from Yahoo! The site is full of activities, games and information about music, movies and videogames. It also has a section called “StudyZone” with kid friendly news, and loads of reference information.

About a year ago the grapevine brought to our house and neighborhood, Maple Story. This global massively multi player online RPG game allows the kids can make their own avatars, fight crazy monsters, collect virtual items and chat with their friends. The game has driven my son and many of his friends to obsessive frenzy over which level they are on and how many meso’s they have in the bank – they have to buy the meso’s for real $$ so they can buy the virtual stuff.

His best friend’s father in California got him a gmail account so my son signed up to get one too. Now he and his friend e-mail and IM through the service. (I’ve got a great Internet guardian software service from Content Watch on all the computers in house to track where he goes and what he’s doing online. This is a necessity. The software allows him to send a request to me via e-mail for access to sites that are blocked by the filters.)

Cell Phone

The first cell phone I owned was a Motorola MicroTac. It made phone calls – that’s all. No screen, no sms, no videogames. Just calls and it was huge with horrible battery life. Last summer we got him his first cell phone so that he could be reached or call us in an emergency. He shoots pictures and videos and plays some videogames on it. (We haven’t gotten him a data plan so the content just stays on his phone for now and he shares it with his friends at school) Last week he asked me for the data plan so he could sms his friends and he asked for the Blackjack from Cingular so he could check his gmail account and watch TV on the go. (I told him no.) We found out this month upon receiving the bill that included the winter vacation, that lacking in emergencies and armed with mobile 2 mobile free minutes he spent the equivalent of 8 hours last month on the phone with his fellow Cingular Wireless friends. (Much of the time it appears coincided with playing Maple Story)

VideoGames

I remember getting our first Atari game console with Space Invaders and Asteroids. It seemed like a whole new world had opened up for me and my brothers. I also remember owning a handheld football game from Mattel. Over the past few years he’s received at various birthdays and holidays a PSP, XBOX 360 and Nintendo DS. Each device has it’s own set of media content and formats. And each has it’s own level of connectedness to the internet or others in the vicinity. On a recent trip to Hawaii, my son and a friend of his were sitting in different parts of the plane using the DS WiFi to send messages back and forth. He watches movies and TV shows on the PSP also. Recently he questioned the need to buy the same game in multiple formats. He suggested that someone should make a universal disc that can be played on all his gaming devices.

This is just a short dig into my son’s digital media habits. I am sure he is not alone. He is part of a generation that has been weaned on digital media from the get go and they don’t know or can imagine a world without it. He and his friends have the luxury of not having to ask how the platform works. Rather they accept the platform as a constant as they accept electricity and they are dreaming up ways to use that platform that we can’t even imagine. Watch out media companies.