Bob Garfield brings chaos to BC broadcasters’ conference

The famous Bob Garfield, former columnist of Advertising Age brought his Chaos Scenario to the BC broadcasters’ conference this week. It was not a pretty sight.

Garfield’s been a regular columnist and commentator on mass media for decades. Now he’s turned his witty talents to where the big money is: consulting. And, I guess, to being a keynote speaker at conferences and conventions, such as the one I attended this week in Victoria British Columbia.

The BC Association of Broadcasters (BCAB) invited me to join them for this annual two day conference. And of course, like most conferences it had a theme: “Stayin’ Alive!” The hotel ballroom was filled with executives and owners of radio and television station from across BC as well as several hangers-on. Like me.

These are challenging time for broadcasters, revenues are down and competition is coming at them from all sides. So the theme “Stayin’ Alive!” seemed appropriate.

After all, this is the five billion channel universe we’re living in. The competition for media audiences is coming from all the usual sources (Facebook, MP3, YouTube, MySpace, etc, etc.) and new ones are popping up every day. New portals, communities, alliances, networks, websites and aggregators are being created to satisfy the very specific media, news, entertainment, information and connectedness needs of the world’s population. Among these new media channels are millions of bloggers and countless corporate websites, such as Kraft.com, the giant food company that is now taking its recipes and coupons directly to the consumer and cutting out the traditional conduits such as magazines and TV. And then there are the sites like Pandora.com that stream un-regulated radio and TV programming into smartphones already.

Good old fashioned radio and TV are quickly dying. Bob Garfield not only told the broadcasters this, he rubbed their faces in the washed-up bloated carcases that have already come ashore in the perfect storm of changing media consumption habits, the proliferation of media channels and the economic recession.

Would the situation be better for the broadcasters if the recession wasn’t in the mix? Yes, of course, but that wouldn’t be enough to stop Garfield from casting his doomsday predictions. He’s been saying this for years. How long do the broadcasters have before they’re wiped off the media landscape, we asked? According to Garfield, next year’s conference will attract a much smaller crowd. The cull has begun.

Garfield is an excellent presenter and his remarks often crossed over into to more of a stand-up comedy routine. He was funny. But this room full of broadcasters should have realized that this was an onset of gallows humour that allowed them to laugh. Those not laughing were clearly put-off by this pundit whom they had paid to be their guest speaker. They wouldn’t have been surprised if they had read any of Garfield’s books including his most recent, The Chaos Scenario. All one has to do is to come within a few feet of this book to understand Garfield’s point of view on the future of television, radio and newspapers. They’re all doomed! They’ve past their Best-Before Date.

The room was polite to this purveyor of gloom, and in thanking the guest speaker, it was clear that Corus Radio’s JJ Johnston, was holding back his true feelings.

The fact is, media choices are now vast and global. Many Canadian broadcasters are embracing the new world of multiple platforms and their responding to their audiences’ demand for immediate, local, globally connected and interactive media experiences. Is it too late to stay alive in the chaotic five billion channel universe? For some the answer is yes, it’s too late. For those who are determined to prove Garfield wrong and do so by investing in the chaos that is the five billion channel universe and using the power of their broadcast, the answer is a determined NO. They will be Stayin’ Alive .

Tim Kane is not a broadcaster, but he is a channel in the five billion channel universe.

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