The changing landscape in Media Levels the Ground.

The Covid-19 situation has virtually changed everything. It changed how we interacted, it changed how we associated, how we greeted each other and how we generally socialized. We realized the phrase about Barua ni nusu ya kuonana made more sense now than ever.
It is within this period that I noticed platforms the likes of zoom, Streamyard, OBS studio, TEAMS, google meeting and many others about reaching out to others. Whereas in the past there was a lot of insistence on physical meetings, today that is discouraged and is becoming a thing of the past.
And because we are social beings, we have had to reinvent ourselves. We have had to find solutions on how to survive and adapt. I have attended as many meetings online as I would normally do in normal times. In fact, I had additional advantage over the recent past given the fact that I attended meetings across the globe from the balm of my hands and the comfort of my coach.
But the most interesting thing is the sudden change in the way we make and consume content. It is within this period that I have noticed very great content on Facebook and YouTube from young talents probably ones that could have been hidden in obscurity should things have continued the same as before.
It shouldn’t look like I am advocating for Covid-19, nay. Yet it is a fact that it has offered a lot of our local and continental young people an opportunity to reinvent themselves and that is something that will help a lot of them move from the underground and be noticed.
The media back in the day had a concentrate of the who is who in the industry. In fact, as one local comedian says, they had suffocated the industry and the upcoming artists. This is because they were given more airtime and platform as opposed to young developing talent.
The calamity that came all of a sudden leveled the ground for all them. We then started seeing short skits which helped us laugh our hearts out. We have had a medicine at our convenience and in all variety, something that we lacked. And as we say to ourselves, we have had the best and juiciest part of the broth.
Today, we have as many tv’s as we couldn’t have imagined. A majority of these didn’t have to take millions of moneys to buy frequencies and set up infrastructure. A Facebook account/page and a YouTube page is all that is needed.
And these young people don’t need a lot of investment with the machinery and gadgets. A good phone with a great camera is enough. That is the content I have been enjoying. Given the fact that I cannot concentrate at a single very long video for that matter, I simply go for the short comedies, educative, mind blogging videos I come across the online media platforms.
In the past, I could sit and watch news for a whole two hours. As you are aware, prime time news and the interviews as well as the great debates take as much as two hours. Then I noticed that most of the time, whatever the news offers, often I am privy to it from the unorganized freelance online ‘journalists.’
Before long, the major media houses walked down that same path and now it is the consumer who dictates the industry. That is the greatest change that has come with the once industry that controlled the consumer.
It had become the culture to choke the consumer with whatever they didn’t want but due to lack of choice, they had no option but consume. And in this day and era, we have come to the time when the industry either adapts with the market needs or dies naturally.
The numbers we get to hear of people using these social media sites are mind blogging. And if one is a player in the field and chooses to ignore them, then they have as well chosen the path of doom by their own choice.
So, the future is embedded in a media industry that is versatile and innovative enough to understand the market has adapted itself to be like food. The rules that govern the way we handle and eat food comes to play when we talk about content creation to consumer consumption.
Like food, people to eat determine what is to be cooked most of the time otherwise the food goes to waste because people will not eat it. The same goes with the current dynamics in the media industry, you got to know what the consumer wants or expects before it can be created.
Finally, as it does with the food, which gets served in courses, the media industry has evolved too. You don’t simply bring ugali and managu and serve it in extremely unimaginable amounts and just like that. You serve the dessert, the main course, the soup and fruits in a proper order.
So, the industry demands that we make palatable content in palatable quantities and be served in such a way that it offers the desired need. I need to follow a content without losing concentration, then I see the creativity and finally laugh myself mad and that is it.
End.
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Take a mic and say this aloud! So much truth
Take a mic and say this again. So much truth therein.