'Touch and Feel' of Good Content Often a Mystery

 By Adam McIlwaine

EU Editor

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which pretty much dominated the technology and business press this week, is like one of those mystery  boxes little kids are asked to put their hands into to guess what is inside by the touch and feel.  You'll get ten different answers from ten different kids, and then when they finally discover what it actually is they will scream with glee that they knew what it was all along.

The CES is just like that, only more confusing.  You are never really sure of the what trends come out of each years event because the massive gathering tries to be all things to all people.  Sure, consumer electronics dominates the show - which is expected given its moniker.  However, there is also a fair amount of non-electronics stuff as well, ranging from furniture to high-tech floor mops. 

Okay, maybe I made up the thing about floor mops, but you get my drift.  It is that box with some very strange things inside, only on a much larger scale. 

This year's show was a bit different since thee was a heavy emphasis on entertainment, especially Internet-based and mobile video entertainment.  This is perfect, since the current writers strike in Hollywood has pretty much decimated traditional television, leaving a sad trail of reality shows, home improvement programming and an even more vast wasteland of drivel. If anything, the strike has dramatically driven home the importance of writing and content when it comes to broadcasting and programming.  

My recommendation:  Give the writers everything they want or get used to that huge sucking sound, which is made by people running away from their TV sets in droves.  I wold be really, really upset if I spent a few thousand dollars on a neat 1080p high-def television to watch funny guy Conan O'Brien spin his wedding ring for a minute or two.

The good news is that  these ex-pat viewers have discovered the Internet and mobile content as they pathetically search for a broadcast fix.   Even better news is that they have now realized how really bad most of the current Internet content is when seen in the cold light of a dark and dismal prime time.    

Maybe this is why major organizations like Disney, NBC Universal and  others are setting their development sites on creating better Internet content, and digital poster boy Bill Gates (who is clearly not much of a boy any more when seen through the eyes of a 1080p television set and HD cameras) devoted his swan song at the CES talking about Microsoft's plans to pull everything together under one digital umbrella.   Thanks Bill, and good luck with that philanthropic  2.0 thing!

The danger, however, is that some of the very same people who have wisely decided to shut television and 'old media' writers out of new media movement are also shifting gears to bring their baggage to the Internet and mobile broadcasting.  This means, I fear, that this so-called new wave of content for this brave new media world will in reality be more of the same old thing.  Worse, since mobile devices have the capability of knowing who you are and where you are, this spiffed up content will be saturated with ads and messaging that targets particular demographic groups and individual communities.   

Internet service providers like Comcast have already started promoting this fact, oddly enough with an add that shows a product smacking a consumer in the face and knocking him done.  Sort of like retailing with an attitude. 

There is clearly a lot of work to do as we move toward better content on the Web and on your handheld, involving not only good writing and production but a respect for the limitations of these new media devices and personal privacy concerns.  

Unfortunately, most big name producers and distributors will probably opt to make mistakes and learn from them rather than put some thought into it and avoid mistakes altogether - which means we are back to the land of mystery boxes and trying to guess if something is worth our time in cyberspace.