In the Future, Not All New Media Will Be Short

I have noticed that most of the videos and audios you find online are typically very short. I've been told by media experts that the magic number is four minutes. "More than four and the viewer gets bored." This had something to do, I'm sure, with the time restrictions placed by YouTube. Wired Magazine says we live in a "snack culture" that simply doesn't want to consume anything of substance when it comes to media.

Others argue that four is too many. There is the "One Minute How To" (designed to explain how to do something), the "One Minute Tip" (on technology), the "Sixty Second Investor" and many more. The assumption is that people simply are not going to spend that much time on a single video. It is the ADHD frenzy that is pervasive in online.

I personally believe this is about to change and the new International CES validates that assumption. This electronic expo is demonstrating numerous devices that make the link between the computer and the TV is becoming much more narrow. Soon, we will all be able to simply transmit what we want to watch from our computer to the TV. If we watch online programming on our TV and continue to emphasize short programs, we will have to do a great deal of work just developing a program line up.

I envision the growth of programming that will especially for the Internet. Weekly series that our 30 minutes or an hour long. Netflix, which has movies available online that most are watching on their computers, will become increasingly more relevent as people find it easier to transfer the images on a TV screen.

Eventually the web will cover the whole scope of media in terms of size and type. I also believe that TV will become a mere display tool, but the real media will be the Internet itself.

Kevin Price is Host of the Houston Business Show (M-F at 11 AM on CNN 650) and Publisher of the Houston Business Review. Hear the show live and online at HoustonBusinessShow.com. Visit the archive of past shows here.