NAVIGATING AN
ON-DEMAND SOCIETY
By Greg Oakford
Last week I was sitting down
at a restaurant in Albert Park
for my cousin’s birthday
and my near 60-year-old
uncle was making it known
he’d been waiting in his car
for over 90 minutes before
everyone else turned up.
We are not approaching an
on-demand society, we are
already living in it and it’s only
going to accelerate further
into the future. What thoughts
come to mind when I mention
the following: Podcasting,
Spotify, Netflix, Stan, YouTube,
Facebook and Amazon Prime?
The list goes on.
Asked what he did to pass the
time, it was an enthusiastic
response of “watched
awesome car videos on
YouTube”.
The internet and the
infiltration of smartphones
and tablets has changed the
game. Born in the mid 80’s, I
believe I’m in a sweet spot of
being able to remember what
life was like pre-internet and
what the timeline looks like
since. It’s fun to think about.
I’m not sure whether the
fact that everyone has a TV
on them 24/7 has actually
sunk in yet? The behaviour of
consuming hours of content
whether it be video, audio or
written word on that small
smartphone device attached
to everyone’s hip has become
normalised in a very short
period of time.
8
I GOLF MANAGEMENT AUSTRALIA
Society was told when and
where they could consume
their favourite media.
Breakfast radio with host ‘X’
starts at 6am, Seinfeld airs at
I
SPRING EDITION 2017
7pm nightly, Sports Tonight
at 10:30pm on Ch. 10 and
the AFL game review is in
The Age tomorrow. We were
dictated to and that’s perfectly
fine because there weren’t
any other options, it had to
happen that way.
Fast forward to 2017, the year
we actually live in - how many
people are sitting through a
half-hour re-run of Friends on
Foxtel or a free-to-air channel
and watching it on the
network’s time with full blocks
of ads? If you have a Foxtel IQ
box or a DVR type set-up from
the last 5-10 years, you’ve
had the ability to record your
show and watch it on your
time, not to mention being
able to skip straight through
the ads. Rather than spending
a full 30mins catching up
on Joey wearing everything