On Dreams and Memories

Michael Hedges July 4, 2008

In many lands of this media world, memories are bigger than dreams. Old media stumbles under the weight of all that has gone before. Dreamers stumble, too, but they soldier on, eyes front, forward into the fog.

George Johns, legendary North American broadcaster (dream maker and dream catcher), passed along this week a tiny nugget of inspiration he collected from, wouldn’t you know, an investment banker: “Do not invest in anything where memories are bigger than dreams.” George scampered out of Manitoba for the Lower 48 faster than Neil Young and the Guess Who in search of his dream. He knows of what he speaks.

His point, in a lengthy email, was that radio broadcasting in North America is long on memories and short on dreams. Or, maybe, it’s long on memories because it’s short of dreams. And it’s stumbling on the weight of it all. The same, though, can be said of other corners of media-land.

When investment bankers talk about investment it’s about cold, hard cash. When broadcasters, like George Johns, talk about investment, it’s about time, talent and passion. Nothing reaches the broadcasters soul more than a listener reaching for the radio to turn it up.  Without looping fruitlessly into the malaise of American radio broadcasting, suffice it to say that dream is gone.

Is this not also the malaise of newspapers? Of television? Newspaper memories are half a millennium deep. If the dream that remains is nothing more than reaching back for a memory it’s hard to scare up ‘investment,’ literally and figuratively. Is Rupert Murdoch’s dream for the Wall Street Journal merely reaching back for a memory? Sam Zell and his radio team have no institutionalized ‘newspaper’ memory. Does that not allow more space for dreams? Where would you rather invest your time, talent and passion?

A look at major media companies shows well-tread memories and few dreams, except for institutional investors and accountants. Annual reports make one thing clear: these are investment vehicles that happen to be in the media business. At least the senior executives at Enron were passionate about being crooked.

Where, then, are dreams alive? Certainly, there is passion in new media. Unsurprisingly, investment is there, money and beyond.

More often than not people in new media – from designers and code writing geeks to content producers and sponsor hunting salespeople – put their dream out front. You hear, “We can do this really cool thing.” When did you last hear that? When did you last say that?

Dreams are found – and legends being created – where institutional memory is short or, in many cases, uprooted. Broadcasters in Central and Eastern Europe – private and public – are inventing, looking for the listener (or viewer) to ‘turn it up’. Private sector broadcasters carry no baggage of institutional memory. Everything, for them, is new to create and share. Public broadcasters in Eastern Europe are trying to erase the lingering institutional memories of State broadcasting and find an entirely new voice.

When media people have a dream to share the sharing becomes paramount. The dream is to move somebody; a listener, a viewer, a reader, a web surfer, a gamer. In new media there are no passive dreams; there are people to engage. Being wedded to an institutional memory just gets in the way.

Nowhere is the media dream more evident – across all platforms – than in developing regions. Newspaper publishers in Africa, television broadcasters in Russia, radio broadcasters in Asia are lifting their game, using the tools of new technology, and engaging people. “They really are inventing a third way,” said Media Development Loan Fund Development (MDLF) Director Patrice Schneider in a recent conversation about media in China where he has considerable experience. MDLF invests in media dreams and dreamers, B92 in Belgrade being one of its best known success stories. Where are others?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently dredged up his own institutional memory of French State TV in the 1960’s. This bird has flown. Some of the most brilliant and inventive television in Europe has come from young producers using new media techniques at France Télévisions. They may not have all the money in the world but they do have the dreams.

Investors, broadly defined, really do invest where dreams are deeper than memories. Old stories about the way things used to be belong to pensioners. They had their dreams, for which we’re grateful. But I’ve got places to go and people to see.