Steve Safran quotes some US Census figures showing some illuminating figures. His headline is that newspapers, for the first time, will have less use than the internet - no shit, Sherlock - but the more interesting figures relate to the apparent lack of death-by-screaming-agony for the broadcast media. He reports:

Here’s the breakdown: TV: 1,555 hours (up from 1,467 in the year 2000); Radio: 975 hours (up from 942 in 2000); Internet: 195 hours (up from 104); Newspapers: 175 hours (down from 201); Magazines: 122 hours (down from 135); Books: 106 hours (down only an hour); Video Games: 86 hours (up from 64).

Woah, hold on. Since 2000, television up by 6%? Radio up by 3.5%? Could that be because both radio and television are embracing what the internet have to offer as well? Hmm…

Jeff Jarvis writes a piece arguing that broadcasting is (nearly) dead:

So do we tear down the broadcast towers? Not yet. But very soon, the cost benefit of owning that license and equipment will fall to nearly nil (one wonders when delivering via wi-fi mesh networks in cities and satelllite in boonies will become more effective and profitable — perhaps even now). Local TV licenses used to be money machines; now they’re shrinking. Viewership for networks of those stations continues to fall year after year, of course. The barrier to entry to making and now distributing TV is gone. Radio is arguably in better shape so long as we drive and satellite and radio-via-phone grow to critical mass, joining the iPod. And the radio business sucks.

I’m dubious. ‘Very soon’, a broadcasting licence will become worthless? Hardly.

Right now, people in the UK spend 11 hours and 20 minutes online every week, while spending 23.9 hours every week listening to the radio (and heaven knows how much television on top of that). Even against the venerable radio, broadcasting’s dominating the media landscape. Still.

The iPod, critical mass? Hardly. For all its bluster, iPods are a minority interest; while UK sales figures are difficult to come by, if Jeff’s claiming that there are more iPods out there than mobile-phones-with-radio, then he’s wrong. Some figures point total worldwide iPod sales to be 40m or thereabouts; 60% of new mobile phones have an FM radio in them, and Nokia will ship 80m of them this year.

It’s too easy to write off radio, and broadcasting, as a terminally ill patient. The death of broadcasting, just like the death of many other things, is easy to predict, but stubbornly fails to happen. To claim that broadcast licences will be worthless ‘very soon’ is hyperbole; and I suspect that the longer we cry wolf in this way, the harder it’ll be to spot the time when, in the future, broadcasting really starts seriously dying.

My Sony DVD player, bought when we went digital in 1998, has been retired. Aw, bless you, Sony DVD player. We’ve had fun, even though you’re twice the size of any DVD player you can buy nowadays (and significantly more expensive).

The Mac Mini, which has been living next to the telly for the past year or so, is now occupying the space that the DVD player did. Realistically, it produces the same quality picture as the old DVD player; and it means less electrickery under the telly, which is probably good for the environment.

I wonder how many people have wired up computers, or Playstations, or XBoxs, to their television and done away with their DVD player? The only small issue with my Mac Mini, since it’s an original PowerPC version, is that it hasn’t got a remote - but realistically, what do you need a remote for once you’ve pressed play? I’ve used an old wireless mouse that I’ve had lying around for a while, and that works okay (though not quite far enough to reach the sofa).

Also, I’ve managed to get an external hard drive to put all my music on, since my hard drive was getting a little concerningly full.

Those getting bored with this posting should press ‘j’ (since you’re using Google Reader, no doubt) and get on with reading something more interesting.