I’ve never been a big TV watcher- a bit of golf for relaxation and a few shows that I get hooked on. With radio I’m pretty much limited to NPR in the car. However I’ve realized that there is a fundamental shift going on. I’ve reached the point where I really can’t stand broadcast media because of the lack of control and the irrelevant ad serving model. I spend a lot of my time working via the Internet and that’s where I get my information fixes. The difference is that I can go directly to the story or news that interests me at any given moment rather than having it served to me in scheduled portions. This is bad news for TV, radio and print media- I simply don’t care about them at all any more, in fact they irritate me.

The really bad news for broadcast is that I’m not alone. I’m a boomer and we represent the vast majority of buying power on the planet. Virtually none of my friends watch TV (excepting sports which, being live, are an exception) at all. When my girlfriend is around and I have something on (usually local news because our local paper’s web site is dreadful) she insists that I mute the ads because they are so idiotically stupid and repetitive. Guys standing in car dealer parking lots yelling, lawyers trying to ’scare’ up customers, submarine sandwich chains bragging about the size of their portions, etc. There is no relevancy whatsoever and relevancy is what marketing these days is all about.

It’s been well documented that the under 30 generation gets their news in real time via texting, SMS, Twitter and the web. Broadcast ads are totally invisible to them in any media. The only marketing medium that is effective is opinion. Read that again marketers: Opinion is what you are seeking to influence and conventional marketing won’t do the job.