Consuming, producing, sharing through the cognitive surplus

Thanks to Tony at ABC Digital Futures, I’ve seen Clay Shirky’s talk at Web2.0 Explore. You can view the presentation at Calacanis.com.

Using his words, Clay’s insight was to understand that “when people are offered the opportunity to produce and share, they will do it”. The ‘Participative Web’ is that opportunity. Clay describes the migration of people from the TV set to the Web as being of comparable social and economic significance as the industrial revolution.

Some fascinating statistics come out in Clay’s presentation, such as Americans spending 200 billion hours each year watching TV. Imagine the social and economic possibilities if even one half of that time was spent producing and sharing via the Web – using the ‘cognitive surplus’ that has been untapped for many years.

Clay’s view about the inherent attraction to producing and sharing squares with my research on the participative web: that social needs (status, self-esteem, self expression, affiliation, and reciprocity) are increasing being met online.

Finally, Clay’s observation that “media targeted at you but that does not include you” – i.e traditional broadcasting – is on the outer.

Structural differences Australia and global entertainment & media industry

During the course of researching market developments I had cause to revisit PriceWaterhouseCoopers Australian Entertainment & Media Outlook/2007 – 2011 (June 2007).  One issue really stood out – a key difference in the Australian market compared to the global situation.

By 2011 Newspapers are forecast to lead the field in Australia (including Internet, Free-to-air TV (FTA), subscription TV and others) in terms of total industry spending, accounting for 20 per cent of the top 10 categories of spending.  The Internet is forecast to come in at second place followed by FTA and subscription TV.

Now for the global comparison – newspapers are forecast to run it at 4th place, accounting for 11 per cent of spending. Globally the leader (by a comfortable margin) is the Internet accounting for 19 per cent of revenues. Globally, FTA, subscription TV and newspapers are in the top four. 

Newspapers came in first place globally in 2006 but are forecast to fall to 4th position by 2011…while in Australia, newspapers retain “the pole position’ in the forecast period. There are other differences too (such as filmed entertainment forecast to be ranked at 1oth globally and 5th in Australia by 2011). But the most interesting one is Newspapers, Sure, the Internet is hot on the heels of newspapers by 2011 but the comparison internationally appears to be significant.

Now here’s the thing – I don’t know why. Are there any views on this?