In the U.S. Media sector there are three centers: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and New York. Each has its particular characteristics, each is its own world. Plenty of movies and television shows and books have documented the L.A. scene, and its presence is felt every day with every film release and new celebrity gossip column. Silicon Valley reminds us of its might whenever we run a Google search, or update a Twitter profile, on a computer powered by a Sun microchip and running Java. New York, and as dubious as the statement will seem, has been more subtly in the background. But not for long.
Interlude for stage setting:
Since the first emergence of the Internet and broadband communication as popular forms in the ’90s, but much more than ever in the present decade as the web came into its own and became more sophisticated, the Media sector has been segmented in terms of “new” and “old”… the new being the digital, the interactive, the customized, the “west coast”, while the old was the analog, the broadcast, the rigidly syndicated, the traditional “east coast” media conglomerates.
These definitions begin to seem outdated. As we watch MySpace right before our eyes at risk of “getting old” in the formidable shadow of Facebook, or Yahoo! still trying to define and redefine itself under Google’s glow, can we really still say that popular digital media platforms are merely by their nature new anymore? In the meantime, as we see traditional television networks building a web video presence, Hulu, that is giving YouTube a run for its money – literally – which of these platforms is new and which is old?
The point being this: there is no New Media and there is no Old Media. With time, the old has adapted (or is at least starting to adapt) and become (or becoming) new. Concurrently, and more interestingly still, the world of new media is maturing and has started to embrace (or at least consider) a heretofore neglected but very important precept of adulthood: “making money.” And in so doing, it is being discovered that a more modern way of generating cash than advertising or subscription revenues is yet to be invented, although these may now go by a variety of different shapes and names.
As these trends continue, as the industry evolves, the evolution seems to be taking both new and old in the same direction. And the terms New Media and Old Media are rendered meaningless. There is only Emerging Media, and it’s all one sector.
Enter New York:
By its nature, tradition, culture, and industry presence, New York City has been the place where the new and the old, the digital and the analog, technology and entertainment, have all come together. There is here a Times Square and a Tribeca, where content and production abound. There is a Silicon Alley, where technology is invented and digital platforms are created. There is a network of universities within driving distance, perhaps unrivaled in terms of geographical concentration, where media, entrepreneurship, and business, are taught and promoted. Lastly, and perhaps most critically, there is Madison Avenue and Wall Street: the money sources. (What better way to illustrate this unique combination of innovative media and financial concentration, than New York’s political figurehead, and the company which carries his name…)
In the story of this city, there has been a recurring theme of interaction with the world. From its very beginnings, the city was built by capital and human inflow from all directions, and has been a center of commerce, dynamically contributing back to the world with a steady outflow of resources. Interaction and flow… a nucleus of global networks… dynamic evolution… all these are terms that also apply to a certain sector that we follow. Is it a mere coincidence that Madison Avenue, Times Square, and Wall Street, are all here?
