Leo Laporte on New Media

Every once in a while I come across something that syncs so cleanly with what I have observed in my life but been unable to categorize neatly myself that my reaction is quite literally, "Yes.  This.  Exactly."  Which is what I said numerous times as I listened to the talk Leo Laporte gave to the Online News Association this past weekend.  The ideas are simple but the effects can and will be profound.  Content accessibility, whether it's news, entertainment, or silly cat videos, is exploding.  A symptom of that explosion is the federation and specialization of media delivery networks, which in turn provides a vast array of new advertising outlets that reach targeted and demonstrably interested audiences.  It is this new dynamic that is causing magazines to fold and newspapers to die off.  Leo does an excellent job of illustrating this concept in his talk, and it's worth the 40 minute listen.  I particularly enjoyed this bit:

Advertisers don't believe it's worth advertising to smart people because smart people don't pay attention to brand.  Smart people make an actual choice, they can't be tricked or convinced.  They research.  So we can't sell ads to a network for smart people.  

Suddenly television makes sense, doesn't it?