How Much is Too Much?

The audience described in this blog isn't really the target for public radio and public media. Tweens and teens only hear NPR in passing if their parents listen. Perhaps in the car? Their media consumption habits may be the leading edge...the shape of things to come. In the very near future public media will be facing challenges for eyes and ears that will require a major shift in thinking way beyond the challenges that face us today.

Is there too much content?

Too Much TV

CBS is reporting that some experts believe there is too much TV available right now. 

Can the large number of programs sustain itself? The focus of the report is on sustainability. If the audience is being sliced and diced into thinner and thinner slices, are the numbers going to become so small that the weight of cost for traditional broadcast media will not be able to support the content.

Are we becoming addicted to the contact not the content?

A recent report from suggests that young people are spending nine hours a day looking at screens. The Office of National Statistics in Great Britain reports that children are spending three hours a day of social media. That amount of time may be harmful. Social interactions and the ability to communicate may be impaired as a result. The emphasis is on the number of clicks, likes and shares, These are all surface values. There is no depth.

The Telegraph reports...

Screen time - including watching television, spending time on the computer and playing video games - has been associated in previous research with higher levels of emotional distress, anxiety and depression. 

The report found there was a “clear association” between longer time spent on social websites and the incidence of mental health problems.

Couple this with the report on CNN about how teens are spending upwards of nine hours a day on their devices and you can see a problem emerging. The problem is much broader than finding ways to support public radio and public media. James Steyer, chief executive officer and founder of Common Sense Media, in an interview with CNN...

The implications of this digital transformation are huge for tweens and teens, educators, policymakers and parents. For one, living and communicating via mobile devices gets in the way of empathy, said Steyer. Texting is so much less empathetic than having a conversation in person and looking somebody in the eye and having physical or at least a verbal presence with them, he said. Add in the issues of digital addiction and the attention and distraction implications that come with mobile devices, and "empathy is really, really under siege," he said.

The strength  of our content is the ability to tell engaging stories. How do we engage when the audience isn't even listening?