Brian Williams Shows His Generation Gap

Recently Brian Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchorman, jokes about technology at a speaking engagement (Adage had the video). It's really more like a body check [for you hockey fans] about technology. The subjects? Ebooks and streaming (err, radio).

It was humorous...especially when he talks about mastering the technology which he referred to as equipment. He was talking about an iPod Touch. Seemed a little overstated to me.

Whether it is a physical book or a portable radio what Mr. Williams is missing here is that great content needs to be platform agnostic and should work anywhere and anytime on any device. That goal has yet to be reached, but we are getting closer, much closer.

I wonder how many people will choose to stream local radio when it's hard to tell the difference between a stripped down radio station and one that is created in the bedroom of a 19 year old?

The Generation Gap

I started to write a post that was going to talk about the technology generation gap and its impact on the radio business. Once I started writing I thought it might be a good idea to try to find some statistics on the subject. Of course there was no shortage of information! Then, as I was searching and reading I came across a terrific article written way back in 2004 by a PhD named Larry D. Rosen (not the same Larry Rosen many of us know from Edison Media Research). This Larry Rosen has a site called http://www.technostress.com/ and wrote an article Understanding the Technological Generation Gap that quite simply does an outstanding job of explaining what is going on.

It is interesting that way back in 2004 IM was all the rage and text messaging wasn't even mentioned. If just shows how fast things move in today's nanosecond world. This article suggests many things, but I can tell you this, we (yes, all of us) better find some unique ways of entertaining listeners because if we don't someone else will.