• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 28, 2005

We picked the wrong name for this column. We wanted it to represent something fast and forward-thinking, but as it turns out the term "fast-forward" is an anachronism, a throwback to the world of analog media. The reality is that in a digital world, there is no fast-forwarding.

"It's a fake," advanced media guru Shelly Palmer told me recently, explaining that when digital video recorder and video-on-demand providers program a fast-forward feature for their subscribers, it's simply because that's the way analog-bred consumers think. But it's not how digital media actually works.

In the old days of linear videocassette recorders, a person had to literally fast-forward through magnetic tape in order to skip ahead -- presumably past the commercials of a program they had recorded. But on a digital media device -- whether a DVR, a DVD, or a VOD server -- there is no tape to provide a linear point of reference. "So they have to fake it," Palmer explains. "Otherwise, people wouldn't know where they are."

That made me wonder what else we might be faking simply because we aren't capable of finding a point of reference. Could it be that we've been faking the business models we use because we lack the context necessary to operate in a non-linear world of digital media? It's sure beginning to seem that way. Think about it: Virtually everything we do in the media business is based on how we did things before. The way we program content. The way we schedule advertising. The way we buy and sell it. The way we compensate agencies and pay the media. It's all based on an analog way of doing business.

It's understandable. In fact, it may be the only way to understand something new. We apply what we know and see if it works. The problem is, it isn't. Business models are breaking down, because we're faking them. Jack Klues, the CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, alluded to this during his keynote at media magazine's recent Forecast 2006 conference in New York. David Verklin, the CEO of Carat, has said the same. Other media industry leaders are less public about it, but when pressed privately, they acknowledge that when it comes to envisioning a new way of conducting business, they're stuck in pause mode, not in fast-forward.

The easy explanation is that people are thinking short-term. They know the system is breaking down, but they believe it won't break down before they retire or move on. So we cling to what we know. We retrofit the new into the old to make it work the way we think it should, not necessarily the way it should. The Internet is a good example. When it first emerged as a serious medium in the late 1990s, online advertising offered the promise of immediate accountability and precise proof of performance. So what did we do? Rather than developing a business model that would let those attributes flourish, we forced online media into a traditional media market model. Instead we should have recognized the opportunity to reinvent and build a new, perhaps better business around change.

There's a great lesson to be learned from what's going on in the entertainment business, where the market is shifting from a mass, studio-controlled structure to a consumer-centric model. Music is the best example. The major record labels resisted when consumers began searching and downloading music, and nearly drove themselves out of business. They tried to prevent change through legal tactics, but it wasn't until someone invented a new model -- iTunes' pay-per-download system -- that anyone figured out how to make a business out of change. Now Apple plans to do the same thing for the TV and movie industries that it did for the music industry.

No one has yet invented Madison Avenue's equivalent of a video iPod, but some brave thinkers are beginning to tinker with a new model. Greg Wilson, founder of San Francisco-based "non-linear agency" Red Ball Tiger, calls it a "digital asset operating system," or DAOS. Some people think Wilson is nuts when he talks about "relinquishing complete control to the consumer." Personally, I think he sounds a lot like Steve Jobs.