The Future of Media #81: Get Out Your Crystal Ball

Wondering about the future of media is always an exciting daydream!
But I expect future forms, whatever shape they take, will always have to meet certain audience expectations from now on.

Advance Word: viewers will always want to know what entertainment is "coming." Whether in the form of commercials, trailers, news items, web updates, RSS feeds, or even newpapers and magazines, they'll always want something they can quickly scan to know what future offerings to pick and choose.

Watching: as individuals, viewers want to watch what they like, when they like, in a way that's most convenient to them, and with the best possible viewing experience [in 3-D?].
But they'll want to watch what everyone else is watching too.
Be it movie theaters, popular shows, sports events, talk shows, news flashes or awards shows, they'll want to be able to have and share the communal viewing experience, so they can keep current and discuss what's popular with each other. Viewers will always need the media, but they'll need each other too.

Making it their own: the VHS videotape explosion made obvious for the first time the fact that media fans love to collect and own. The future will be intensely more so. Fans will want to save and own copies of DVDs, webisodes, downloads, etc., but will also want to mix, adapt, edit and post to share their own versions [to the extent that copyright law allows]. This will be expected of all future media as well, despite what the media corporations will want to allow.

Favorite Technologies of the Past: I guess for me, being over 50 years old, that my favorite older format would be record albums. They were a large format of audio, with particular handling requirements and gave a unique listening experience. [Albums were played straight through in the sequence the artist determined. They had to be turned over by hand to hear the other side, so the album and the listener had to "work together" to complete the listening experience].
The size of the format and it's packaging allowed for large graphics and quantity of liner notes, providing additional levels of appreciation not really equalled by any format since.