Online, Asleep Or Dead

Michael Hedges October 21, 2013 Follow on Twitter

Now with economic crisis mostly averted, media people are returning to themes of old. Change has been so fatiguing. Media consumers just don’t understand. The internet remains a curse. And young people are as perplexing as ever.

Media luminaries addressing the opening session of last week’s Munich Medientage conference and expo waxed philosophical about the state of almost everything. “The only constant is change,” offered Bavarian Regulatory Authority for Commercial Broadcasting (BLM) president Siegfried Schneider, borrowing from an ancient Greek instead of the other way around. “Change is the essence of the world,” added Bavarian Economy Minister Ilse Aigner, continuing the same theme. Three and a half years ago Frau Aigner, then Federal Agriculture Minister, asked fellow cabinet ministers to stop using Facebook.

The Bavarian government and the BLM co-sponsor the annual Medientage München summit each October, typically following that other notable Munich event – Oktoberfest. German media watchers, perhaps preferring beer, complained of “cultivated boredom” (media.de – October 16), “pretty much the same” (Der Spiegel – October 17). This year’s theme was “mobile life – the challenge for media, advertising and society.”

The always quotable Münchner Merkur publisher Dirk Ippen told those assembled that the only change is that content is a commodity “available free of charge throughout the world” and that the “media landscape is totally fine.”  Media consumers are “either online, asleep or dead,” he continued. But young people are “a big problem.”

Young people are “a big opportunity,” countered ProSiebenSat.1 Media Group legal director Conrad Albert. Media people are confused about young people, explained University of Bonn media professor Caja Thimm. “Young people don’t use Twitter, they have Whatsapp,” buzz and Twitter not being the same. Young people know what they use and aren’t very media literate. And stop calling them “digital natives.”

Media people also confuse “delivery of media content with media content,” observed private broadcaster association VPRT president Tobias Schmidt. Facebook and Twitter don’t “change the need for and demands of media content. Content is what fills the web and that content comes from broadcasters and publishers.”

Google is still a problem for the German media elite, though most would not mention the name, polite as they were to Google Germany executive Philipp Justus sitting among them. “Traditional media companies are not only competing with each other but also with large, international companies,” said the BLM’s Schneider.“ Search engines, websites and video portals aren’t subject to the same advertising restrictions as broadcasters, complained VPRT’s Schmidt.

Looking solidly at the politicians in the room Sky Deutschland CEO Brian Sullivan called for a “level playing field” and Herr Schneider listed the problems associated with those unnamed international companies: “copyright law, tax law, data protection, access to networks, searchability, the definition of markets including media concentration law.” Minister Aigner said she’d fight “any distortion of competition, including tax dumping.” Without getting into specific complaints, Google’s Justus said, “We see Google not as negative as it sometimes appears.”

In the end, the leading lights of German media looked forward. “You can’t put the genie back into the bottle,” said Mr. Sullivan, referring, of course, to the web. “We are at the point where we have to stop the self-flagellation,” said VPRT’s Schmidt. “In the internet ocean, we are the beacon,” gazed Dirk Ippen.

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