An interesting but very unsurprising thing took place today as Google made the decision to cut its radio advertising sector, leaving 40 people jobless in the process. The most powerful Internet-based company in the world has now essentially removed itself from two of the traditionally more prominent mainstream mediums: print several weeks ago and now radio. They have cited the economic downturn as well as unfavorable results for the decision and plan on focusing those resources mostly on online audio in the future.
I think we are entering a phase where we will begin to see a lot of other businesses follow in Google’s footsteps and start yanking resources from their traditional media budget if not cutting entire programs, like Google did . Especially in a recession like the one we find ourselves in right now, people just don’t want to keep paying for things that aren’t working anymore. With the ability of the Internet to basically play the role of radio better than it does itself and the rapid advancements we see made every day in mobile technology, the darkest days have yet to come for broadcast radio. Online radio is a whole different story, though.
You can almost see the migration of each traditional form of media to the Internet taking place now. Basically every single relevant newspaper and magazine now have websites and are reporting their content online. There are literally billions of podcasts, streaming online radio and other forms of online audio out there right now, as well. Television will obviously be the last of the three to fully make the shift because it has always been the most engaging. But as I mentioned in several earlier posts (Changing Mediums and Social T.V.), the seamless integration of television into the Internet and vice versa is inevitable because of the ease in which the two operate together.
In conclusion, I’m sorry to bore you with such a long and drawn out rambling. I just got going and couldn’t seem to stop myself. I’ll be back with links in the morning. Hopefully you enjoy your Thursday evening as much as I’m about to.
Filed under: New Media, Google, online audio, radio, streaming
