A Whole New Definition of 'Niche'
...the cubbification of the world
Super Bowl Sunday came along at the perfect time for me this year. I needed a ray of sunshine. A glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, we can turn this whole thing around before it all crashes down on top of us. It’s estimated that when all is said and done, 100 million Americans will have tuned in to watch the last bastion of anything close to ubiquitous in the sagging world of broadcast television. Media Post’s Adam Buckman put it this way…
“As MC Hammer once sang so eloquently, “Can’t touch this.” ‘This’ is the Super Bowl, TV’s last juggernaut. It is the only American made-for-TV production capable of diverting the attention of an entire nation. Audience fragmentation? That is not a phenomenon that affects the Super Bowl the way it affects everything else in the television universe.”
Expanding on Buckman’s assertion a bit, according to the National Retail Federation, 103 million people say they will either throw or attend a Super Bowl party, and a cool $16.5 billion is expected to be spent on special food, drinks, apparel and decorations. So, yeah, this Super Bowl thing is still a very big deal, which is why it brings me a sense of hope. Hope for what, you ask? Oh! Oh no. No. No. No. You didn’t think I meant…wait, of course you did. It is, afterall, a media newsletter. How insensitive of me. You thought I was talking about hope for the broadcasting business, didn’t you? Oh, my dear friend, I’m so, so sorry. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean seriously…come on. There’s hope and then there’s pure fantasy of the unicorn and rainbow variety. No, silly, I meant hope for all of humanity, not TV. Duh. Seriously, knowing that so many people can all still care about something, and actually want to experience it collectively, well, and I’m not ashamed to say this, it brings a tear to the eye and makes the heart flutter…you heard me!
Now that we’ve got that straightened out, let me tell you why my need for a hope infusion was so acute this week. Two reasons, actually. It began with a phone call to an insurance company. I could stop right there without further explanation for my dour mood and be fully - pardon the pun - covered, not to mention justified. But let me give you a little more detail. I feel the need to talk about it.
It was one of those encounters that leaves you talking to yourself - out loud - and using colorful language that sparks concern amongst those nearby. At about the mid-point of the call, Neva cautiously poked her head into the office as Ella and Gracie, our faithful furry kids, were hurridly slinking out of the room with their favorite toys in hand, well, mouth.
The doom call was with our new dental insurance provider whose name appropriately rhymes with Enigma. It seems that even though Neva and I had enrolled just hours apart, she received a quick confirmation and I did not. Crickets. Nada, for days. Being a person who hates unfinished business at a irritation level approaching an OCD diagnosis, I decided to call the friendly folks and enquire. Following forty-five minutes, nine transfers that I’m pretty sure took me across three different continents, the recitation of my name, address, social security number and sad story of neglect, at least a dozen times - yes, I did have to repeat it multiple times to several of my “helpers” - I was hung up on. Had to be inadvertent, right? The last words spoken before the disconnect, which had already been uttered by “helpers” on two other continents, were “we can’t find any record of you in our system.”
I know, I know, not a unique experience. We’ve all been through this sort of bureaucratic nightmare, which - and I hate to be a conspiracy theorist here - but, as with most retail oriented customer service departments, it’s set up this way by design. If a little choreographed roadblocking leads a disgruntled customer to give up the quest for a refund, claim payment, or disconnect of service, even for a day or two…Ka-ching! They win. You lose. Bada-bing. Bada-boom.
What made this particular encounter different than the rest for me, however, was the customer service methodology employed by my “friends” at Enigma. Each of the legion of people I spoke to had a very niche specialty. One person dealt with enrollment, another handled changes in coverage, a third oversaw claims and cards, yet another, billing, and so on. And, none of the aforementioned strayed beyond the narrow purview of that One Thing. In other words, if the issue for which you’re calling creeped ever so slightly beyond a particular silo you were transferred and then, without fail, asked to repeat all information given to the previous person or persons.
Me: So, my wife and I enrolled at, basically, the same time. She got her confirmation but I didn’t.
Enigma Agent: I see, unfortunately, I’m not finding any record of your enrollment.
Me: How could that be? I DID get a notification on my credit card that the monthly premium had been charged.
Enigma Agent: Oh, that’s a billing question. Hold, I’ll transfer.
Me: Nooooooooooooooooooo!
New Enigma Agent: Hello, who am I speaking to and how can I help you?”
You get the idea. Apparently, I was a complete enigma to THEM. Did I mention I spoke to nine, count’em, nine different people. I kept longing for that one, friendly, reassuring, favorite aunt-type voice, who would show a little kindness and sweetly offer to just “help me work everything out and make it all better.” Didn’t happen. Hell, to Enigma, I didn’t even rate the dehumanizing status of being a member ID number. I simply “did not exist in their system.”
For whatever reason, as I was flailing in this maddening maze, I kept visualizing my “helpers” as each residing in individual cubby holes with the ability to only see the narrow view straight ahead. Isolated and uber specific in their reason for being. No gray. No nuance. All black & white. And that’s when I was reminded of something else that caught my attention this week which had evoked the exact same visualization - Artificial Intelligence.
More specifically, the meteroric rise in attention being paid to generative AI tools like ChatGBT or the new ones being rolled out by Google and Microsoft. Needless-to-say, there has been much consternation expressed about the prospect of AI being used in the creation of content, especially of the journalistic variety. While I understand the outcry and even share in the worries to some degree, that’s not my primary concern. It’s something much more obscure, and yet, potentially significantly more problematic and harder to remedy.
Much of the positive writings about this new technology point out its ability to take search functions on the internet to a whole new level. The providing of an actual answer to a specific query, for example, as opposed to the current Google or Bing search that provides a variety of links that may or may not hit directly on the intent of the question. Think of it as a sniper vs. shotgun blast approach. On the surface it sounds like a good thing. Definitely efficient and convenient. Here’s why I’m worried…
The Extinction of Critical Thought…
“Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” Univ. of Louisville
“Common Sense is the ability to think and behave in a reasonable way and to make good decisions.” The Britannica Dictionary
It’s my opinion that critical thought and common sense are increasingly in short supply among the world’s population. Just watch a few minutes of cable news or take a couple of quick scrolls through Twitter if you need convincing - I’ll wait. Each of those two abilities are developed through exploration, experience, trial and error, and a need to sometimes connect dots without an obvious, well-marked, path. They require the use of logic, based on the consideration of multiple solutions and probabilities to reach a conclusion. Oftentimes, and I think this is one of them, we eliminate the mental exercises that lead to that sort of acuity in the name of convenience, efficiency, and progress. When that happens, all of society suffers.
Ever watch a kid who grew up with computer powered cash registers and smartphones try to make change the old fashioned way? Actually count it out. It’s wickedly entertaining because their brains just don’t work that way, meaning they don’t understand simple counting logic, resulting in a challenge for them on the order of advanced calculus. So, while having to weed through a variety of search results, and accompanying ads, to find the one most helpful can be annoying, it’s also mind expanding. Through the perusing, you invariably learn a different aspect or angle to the information you’re seeking, meaning you also gain certain context that broadens your understanding, and sometimes changing your total outlook on whatever it was you needed to know. It makes you think and consider, the very door- openers to critical thought and the foundation towards gaining common sense, which, as I mentioned at the outset, are skills all evidence points to as being in sharp decline. Can you even imagine one of those change challenged kids being asked to balance a check book?
The inability to critically and effectively process information can only lead to the creation of a very small, unsympathetic, and largely intolerant world view. Specific questions responded to with hyper-specific answers. No side trips of exploration or discovery, no consideration of alternative points of view or opinions. No co-mingling of both the specific and the peripheral in search of a broadened reality. Virtual blinders. Nothing to see beyond a narrow sliver of information for that very specific search. Black or white. Up or down. Nothing in between.
The Great Cubbification…
Like the organization my friends at Enigma have constructed - a veritable catacomb of tiny cubbies isolated one from another where information is restricted by a serious “need to know” mentality - I fear we’re doing the same with this one, broadly used, aspect of AI. As Brian Morrissey suggested last week in The Rebooting, media businesses are going to have to get used to acquiring audiences through “primary engagement” instead of social media or searches tied to broad content buckets. There are some benefits overall in the form of the need to use less click bait, meaning a higher overall quality of content. That said, audiences are going to be significantly smaller and brands will live or die, in large part, on their ability to retain their niche appeal and deliver high quality at an economically viable price. In other words, our media landscape will continue to move towards a lot of small, isolated tents serving a select few.
All of this to say, there needs to be a counter to this trend. A safe information space to co-mingle thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Micro versions, if you will, of the Super Bowl party where, regardless your team affiliation, the invitation is there to enjoy, challenge, discuss, eat, drink, and walk out, having experienced slices of life, people, and places only accessible when we step out of our cubbies and into the real world.
Last week we talked a little about the recent “Roadmap for Local News” report that, like so many others, characterizes local news as essential to the continued existence of our democracy and suggests it’s salvation will only come when the constraints of tradition, rigid cultures, and templates are abandoned in favor of “radical” approaches and considerations. It espouses a move to what it calls a Civil Media approach featuring, among other things, inclusion of all interested parties in creating news agendas, pop-up newsrooms that allow for public interaction with journalists, and frequent town hall-style meetings to bring all opinions together, as good starts down that path.
It’s ironic that, in this case, radical is defined as complete transparency and inclusion; the co-mingling of ideas with equal weight of consideration afforded one and all. A total lack of silos or cubbies that allow for the broadest of interpretations and solutions. As I read the report last week I found myself quietly nodding approval with much of what was said. After this week, I think I’m ready for a full-throated endorsement.
As technology (governments and political parties too) push us towards isolation in the name of efficiency or for the benefit of other, more nefarious, agendas, it’s important we find ways to pitch the bigger tent and continue to espouse the exposure to, and the exchange of, broader ideas. It’s important that we cultivate more “favorite aunt” voices who want to help make it better and less cubby bound automatons programmed to meet only a specific need or direct you to a specific fact, which often serves a purpose other than your own, and not the broader view. It may be too late for legacy TV (sorry) but the Super Bowl does tell us there may still be hope for the Human Race…maybe. And, as we have said so many times in this space and will, no doubt continue to do so, the media needs to lead this insurrection of transparency, tear down those cubbies, and pitch a big beautiful tent in their place.
Now, if we could only come up with a better insurance company…Ha! speaking of unicorns and rainbows…