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2009
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Scenario 2: Back to the Future

Back to the Future is a scenario where the consumer market is changed dramatically, but ownership and production reamains concentrated in the hands of the current media companies, including public broadcasters.  Big players remain big.  They adapt and adjust.  Their size, assets, and business skills did matter in terms of staying power, earning power and ultimately control.  The companies we know today--major networks, publishers and broadcast groups--now changed their service offerings to meet the needs of different marketplace. What they (and we!) provide is no longer mass media but personalized and focused media, organized almost entirely by large corporations (sort of what we had in, say, the last quarter of the twentieth century, thus the name). 

The primary features of Back to the Future include:

• Mass media is over.  Broadcast properties and mass-market publications do not play as large a role in the culture as they once did.  Those companies now service the consumer through a much broader range of service and product offerings. 
• Instead of networks, we talk about platforms--devices or groups of devices that work together seamlessly, because Microsoft or Apple or Sony, Phillips or BMG or Time-Warner has finally figured out how to put the package together.  
• Quality of sound matters less, as consumer go for choice and control.  Convenience trumps quality--but there is a niche market for quality sound.

When the group participants were asked to imagine "What sort of headlines would we read over the next ten years, if the Back to the Future scenario were unfolding?" they came up with this listing: