• by May 2, 2005

TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY SIX MILLION CHANNELS ON AND STILL NOTHING TO WATCH -- Ordinarily, when we hear the words "nano" and "television" used together we think of Robin Williams. Williams, we recall, played the improvisational alien character Mork on ABC's hilarious lowbrow '70s sitcom "Mork & Mindy." The character, something of a cross between Ray Walston's Martin in "My Favorite Martian" and non sequitur comic genius Jonathan Winters, would inexplicably utter the phrase "nano-nano" over and over and over again. Now we understand why. Apparently, it wasn't simply space travel that Mork had mastered, but time travel as well, because 30 years later, the concept of nano broadcasting is about to transform TV as we know it.

To scientists, the term nano means a technology that operates at a sub-molecular level. To science-fiction writers and futurists it means microscopic machines capable of building, repairing, or replicating things at a molecular level. To the broadcast industry, it means a form of audience fragmentation that will make cable or satellite TV look quaint by comparison. If nanocasting emerges the way its supporters say it will, it won't be Bruce Springsteen's famed 62 channels, or even John Malone's apocryphal 500 channels that the TV industry will have to contend with, but conceivably hundreds of millions. Yeah, that's right, nanocasting, or the commercial adaptation of podcasting, creates a platform in which every woman, man, or child theoretically could have their own channel - or even channels, for that matter.

Lest we be accused of typecasting, we should point out that there are numerous other forms of mediacasting used to denote micro-targeting, and not all of them are negative ones. Media buying gurus Steve Farella and Audrey Siegel even coined one when they named their fledgling communications planning shop Targetcast. Still it seems that the die is cast and audience targeting will grow ever more miniscule until we reach a point where audiences are simply too niche, and require what Publicis Media's Chief Innovation Officer Rishad Tobaccowala calls "re-aggregation."

Meanwhile, let's review the evolution of audience disaggregation:

Broadcasting begot narrowcasting
Narrowcasting begot targetcasting
Targetcasting begot nanocasting
Nanocasting begot flycasting

No, flycasting is not a new digital media technology, but an old one based on bamboo, wood or composites and lightweight lines used to cast faux flies in the hopes of snagging a live fish or two.

Go fish!

Or, as Mork might say, "Shazbot!"