Both industry and communications scholars expend significant resources and energy trying to determine why some technologies are successfully developed as mass communications systems while others never catch on. Mass communications systems have proliferated at different rates in their evolution. Newspapers and magazines took centuries to evolve into effective mass communications systems, however radio and television were each rapidly adopted. Scientists seek to understand what it is about a particular media, and the conditions of a society at a given time that lead to different rates and success of adoption.
The success of Information on Demand may depend on issues related to the influence of the family, the political system, economic considerations, schools, requirements of national security, and other systems that have shaped our existing mass media society.
If over 100 channels were available to every television set what would be shown. One browsing through channel guides for a short period reveals that there is significant overlap among program suppliers and that content is repeated in order to fully utilize network capacity. It is disconcerting to advocates for Information on Demand that many of the new broad-band networks being deployed will be used to double or triple the amount of wrestling, quiz games, rock video, and soap operas available to the average family.
The concept of narrow-casting in itself has already demonstrated tangible effects on our social system, as it affects family interaction, community integration, and societies values as a whole. Information on demand posses similar threats as it could drive families apart into their own realms, just as today teenagers go to their rooms to watch television.
When electronic mass media systems first arrived, the shortage of resources needed to utilize the system drew families and communities together. In the 1950's when a black and white television set cost almost as much as a car, the entire family would gather around it the evening and it served as an activity. However, families were drawn away from community activities and integration into their religions, social and political realms. It is said about the South that people used to spend their evening relaxing on their front porch. Since the advent of mass media systems as the primary activity for leisure time, people have been drawn into their homes and away from their neighbors.
Mass media may have contributed to high crime rates, and the degeneration of our communities. One must consider what activities mass media systems have supplanted where as now the primary leisure activity for many Americans occurs on the couch of the living room. A further consideration of narrow-casting is that communities of special interests are able to live within a closed realm. Mass-media systems before the proliferation of cable was able to focus society on a particular issue and bring about a community consensus within a range of viewpoints. Now individuals can choose to get their information from a particular viewpoint, and refuse to consider the issue from other perspectives.
As a new paradigm, Information on Demand, possesses the potential to challenge an existing social system of information dissemination that has evolved over the last hundred years. It is no co-incidence today that telecommunications companies and the entertainment industry are integrating through corporate take-overs and partnerships. Content will be the key to the success of Information on Demand. It offers consumers a new utility, the ability to acquire all available content and take part in the process of shaping the message.