{"id":327,"date":"2006-04-10T09:42:47","date_gmt":"2006-04-10T15:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=327"},"modified":"2006-04-10T09:42:47","modified_gmt":"2006-04-10T15:42:47","slug":"disneys_counter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=327","title":{"rendered":"Disney’s counterrevolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

“In the future, consumers will rely more and more on strong brands to help them navigate the digital world,” says<\/a> Anne Sweeney, the head of Walt Disney’s ABC television network, in announcing<\/a> that ABC will begin streaming four of its top shows for free on the web, complete with ads.<\/p>\n

It’s a counterrevolutionary statement, one that assumes that the computer screen is little different from the TV screen.<\/p>\n

The whole idea of participative, or citizen, media is an assault on the power of big brands to determine what people read and watch and listen to. Tokens of central, paternalistic, commercial control, brands lie at the very heart of the traditional power of the so-called mainstream media. Sweeney is saying that media brands, which have seemingly lost some of their power recently, will ultimately triumph on the web. The future will end up looking like the past – only more so. Faced with the welter of online media choices, “consumers” will flock to trusted brands to “help them navigate the digital world.” Same as it ever was.<\/p>\n

I think she’s probably right. Much of the excitement about participative media stems from the behavior of a very thin, and very unrepresentative, slice of the population. The vast majority of people, when it comes to media, are happy to be fairly passive consumers – they don’t want to invest a lot of time trying to figure out what’s worth their time and what isn’t. As long as that fact remains a fact, brands will rule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In the future, consumers will rely more and more on strong brands to help them navigate the digital world,” says Anne Sweeney, the head of Walt Disney’s ABC television network, in announcing that ABC will begin streaming four of its top shows for free on the web, complete with ads. It’s a counterrevolutionary statement, one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}