Have you ever listened to Bob Garfield during his NPR program, On The Media? Garfield and co-host Brooke Gladstone do a nice job of making media issues seem tidy. In contrast, a post on AdAge by Jeff Goodby makes Garfield’s new book “The Chaos Scenario” sound, well, chaotic. Let’s not forget, Garfield contributes to AdAge regularly.
In the interest of giving Goodby’s piece its just due, here’s a few remarks we thought you’d like — hope over to read them in context:
— First up, the headline, “Sorry, Bob, Adworld’s Not Dying. 2 Stars.”
— “But [Garfield] saves the real snickering for advertising people, who are basically riding an out-of-control steam train while lighting cigars with a vanishing stack of $100 bills.”
— “But you have only to look at the cover of Bob’s book — which was consumer-generated and consumer-selected — to see that this might not be the future. Or at least the only future.”
— “Fifty years ago, San Francisco advertising man Howard Gossage said, ‘People read what they want to read. Sometimes it’s advertising.’ It still could be, Bob.”
— “The fact is, much of the internet is not paying for itself, especially in the media realm. Bob would say: Great — then die, media realm, die. I, on the other hand, believe that very soon the internet will finally wean us off the expectation that everything’s free online. And it will do so through a combination of micropayment entry fees and, yes, advertising that people like.”
There’s a whole discussion going on around the “make the Web not free” issue, and I fundamentally disagree that we’ll eventually have to pay. This isn’t to say that things won’t head that way, but free content has been free since the TV was invented and frankly no one has come up with a better payment system since then. Except cable, which is basically the equivalent of your Web service bill. It’s just too early to tell.
More: “Jeff Goodby: ‘We are becoming irrelevant award-chasers.’”