Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

When it comes to media con­sump­tion, my kids don’t under­stand time and space the way I do.  For them, a pro­gram is on when they turn it on. The idea of being in a cer­tain place at a cer­tain time to watch their favorite pro­grams seems a lit­tle ridicu­lous to them. Espe­cially when I tell them Dragon Tales isn’t on and then have the gall to ask if there’s some­thing else would they like to watch.

Since the day they became aware of Dora and com­pany, they’ve had DVDs, Tivo, Video iPods, iPhones, on demand pro­grams, and Web video avail­able for them to watch when­ever mom and dad agree it’s OK. They also don’t really under­stand why some­one would watch some­thing they couldn’t pause when they needed to get up for a bath­room break.

Because of this, they’re grow­ing up pretty device neu­tral. They don’t think of media in the sense that music comes from a radio, TV shows are best watched on the tele­vi­sion, and the best news report­ing is found in a news­pa­per. To them it’s as nat­ural to watch a pro­gram on an iPod in an air­plane as it is to lis­ten to music on a liv­ing room hi-fi – and there is no best device, only what’s avail­able in the time and space that they hap­pen to be in.

These new “media” (devices and tech­nolo­gies) have cre­ated the abil­ity to trans­port con­tent con­sump­tion any­where. Look around in pub­lic and you’ll and see the peo­ple trans­fixed on their lit­tle devices con­nected to the inter­net every­where at any­time. It’s not just my daugh­ters, but aver­age busi­ness peo­ple with the aid of their smart phones have become time and space shifters.

There’s been a lot of hub bub about the changes com­ing from the iPad. I think we’ve already been liv­ing this change for awhile. Peo­ple are becom­ing device neu­tral and more con­cerned with the stream of con­tent and hav­ing accesses to that stream on what­ever device they can use at the time. Take look around a Star­bucks, a sub­way car, or an air­port and you’re bound to see peo­ple access­ing their favorite con­tent on what­ever device they have that’s connected.

This has made us mar­keters and pro­duc­ers of con­tent upset but con­tent users very happy. It’s not the users fault that we haven’t fig­ured out how to charge for some­thing that’s no longer con­tained by time or space (remem­ber being asked to tune in on the same time next week).

As mar­keters and con­tent providers, we need to rec­og­nize that it’s that stream of infor­ma­tion that’s impor­tant and not the device.