Newspapers, magazines, radio and television are the four traditional media, and now there seems to be a "fifth media", so what is the "fifth media"? The first thing you need to do is to get your hands

Newspapers, magazines, radio and television are the four traditional media, and now there seems to be a "fifth media", so what is the "fifth media"? The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on a cell phone. Data broadcasting platform opens, broadcasters to join the war, fifth media emerges

(2002-03-18 09:12:05)

The first phase of China's data broadcasting platform, constructed by China Broadcasters Data Broadcasting Network Ltd, will be inaugurated in a ceremony in Beijing tomorrow.

It is understood that at present, China has 38,000 kilometers of national broadcasting and television fiber optic cable trunk lines, linking more than 3 million kilometers of cable TV networks, connecting about 100 million households, becoming the first country with cable TV. With the establishment of China Radio and Television Group and China Broadcasting Film and Television Transmission Network Company, the national broadcasting network resources will continue to be integrated, and ultimately formed a set of cable

, satellite, wireless in one of the whole network, the whole network, star network, up and down through the advanced technology, covering the whole country's broadcasting and television transmission system. With China's accession to the WTO, for domestic home users and professional users of information services market has a very broad development prospects, so the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. The broadcasting system clearly realizes that it should rapidly participate in the competition in this field and make it an important part of the information service market.

Li Youping, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, believes that data broadcasting is the fifth media, the fifth media is a newborn cultural **** enjoyment structure, both to support personalized on-demand services, but also to support the free growth of the number of users, which helps the other four kinds of media ? Newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet? into the home, creating a new personalized service of cultural media.

The advent of the 3G era has pushed the capabilities of cell phones to an unprecedented level. In the face of what may be the fastest spreading and fastest growing media group in the future - cell phones - it can be said that several families are happy and several families are sad. With the imminent arrival of the 3G era, a cell phone as the terminal of the "fifth media" is rising.

The industry generally believes that the catalyst for the "fifth media" is 3G, and experts predict that in the next five years, 3G will spread rapidly around the world. With cell phones as the carrier of the "fifth media" and related industries will also be unprecedented development. But in front of the "fifth media" this new industry, the related areas of the "expression" is not the same, which more or less reflects the potential of this industry as well as shortcomings.

Operators to the "media-oriented" transformation

In the broadcasting to telecommunications, content service providers in the "fifth media" feast before the time of stagnation, telecom operators but quietly their tentacles to the value-added services. With the continuous development and promotion of 3G applications, consumers need more personalized and quality multimedia data services. As the content service provider's understanding of the user is far less than that of the operator, and the operator is not able to pass this user information to the content service provider, which leads to the content service provider in the design of the business, the development of the product is not targeted, resulting in the content service provider behind closed doors, the design of the product is actually a lot of their own pat on the head shot, not based on the user's needs to develop out of.

It is in this case, telecom operators began to reach out to the "content". In Beijing, the "China IT wealth? Cave CEO snow annual meeting" in Beijing, China Unicom value-added business department general manager Wang Yingpei disclosed: the current Unicom intends to value-added business of the new brand Uni into a mobile portal, in the cell phone terminal to provide a wealth of information and services. The content is divided into 3 categories: entertainment, life and work. Entertainment and life are mainly for fashionable, fresh and elite people, while work is mainly business and tool applications. Uni is a comprehensive media portal for Unicom's mobile data value-added services, Wang said. Wang said that operators are now trying to enter the "fifth media", and it is believed that in half a year's time, we will see a shift towards "mediaization" of value-added services by operators. Indeed, unlike traditional telecommunications services, in the 3G era, the industry chain will be re-adjusted, operators will become the main body of the industry, the depth of the SP's involvement will be inevitable.

However, it is not the best way for operators to directly operate the business of content service providers. In Europe and the United States, due to the value-added business platform is closed, not open, resulting in 3G development is not ideal. It has been proven that a really good platform should adopt a semi-open VAS platform like Japan and South Korea, which is conducive to revenue and profit **** enjoyment, and is also conducive to the operators to enhance the role of the market guidance, and enhance the interactive role of the content service providers.

Only when operators and content service providers are in a good interactive relationship, can content service providers have more market-adapted designs, and investors will also join in. Therefore, in the era of the "fifth media", operators must according to their own technical ability to grasp the depth of business cooperation within a manageable range, multi-party cooperation, mobilize the enthusiasm of all parties in the industry chain, give full play to the advantages of all parties to provide high-quality services, and to find out a multi-party *** win-win-win model, 3G industry chain of each party has a space to perform. The only way to achieve this is to form a personalized, humanized "fifth media" that truly realizes multimedia services.

Creating a win-win 3G industry chain

The maturity of the "fifth media" depends on the perfection of 3G services. The development cycle of an industry includes several periods such as germination, growth, prosperity and decline, and the global 3G speed has shown that the development of the 3G industry from the early development of investment into the growth stage, and China's 3G road is about to start, the 3G application problem should attract the attention of all parties. Only to create a complete industrial chain, the formation of multiple **** win-win profit model, 3G industry can go more stable, go farther.

Mobile phone than the popularity of computers, newspapers than interactive, portable than TV, cell phones as a new media to challenge the traditional forces of the future is expected. Of course, the cell phone as the carrier of the "fifth media" is still only the first signs, from the method to the details, from theory to practice are still trying to stage, the growing pains are bound to accompany it for a long time.

Content service providers have a hidden agenda

2. The 5G era has given rise to a number of mobile content service providers, and the great reliance on content services for the "fifth media" based on the 3G network is destined to increase the weight of content service providers day by day. The "fifth media" for the content service providers to provide a wide world and business opportunities, Qualcomm executive vice president and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technology Group, Dr. Sanjay Jarvis predicted that within five years, the global mobile content profits will reach 90 billion U.S. dollars, which does not include the current popularity of the peer-to-peer text messaging.

In fact, the first to put forward the concept of "fifth media" in China is also the content service providers. As early as 2002 in the "Sohu cell phone fashion tour" activities, Sohu CEO Zhang Chaoyang and COO Victor Koo, boldly and clearly put forward the "personal mobile terminal" as a platform for the "fifth media The concept of "fifth media" was boldly and clearly put forward by Sohu CEO Zhang Chaoyang and COO Victor Koo with "personal mobile terminal" as the platform, and TOM even declared that it would be the "boss" of the "fifth media". However, only two years later, in front of the topic of 3G, almost all content service providers have coincidentally chosen to remain silent. Are they really losing watermelon and picking up sesame seeds, focusing only on the immediate plate of food and has smelled the aroma of the 3G meal did not realize?

The current situation is that most of the enterprises engaged in value-added services are in a non-profit or loss-making state. In addition to the superficial prosperity of value-added telecommunications business, in fact, there is no substantial business growth, value-added business content has not yet embarked on a very healthy development track. The weakness of the content application business will lead to a lack of 3G applications, which will lead to consumers not willing to pay for 3G.

A reluctant to disclose the name of the circle of people in a word to break the mystery: previously in the push 2.5G business, some ICPs to push the business for various reasons stranded, while the operators have taken the "drought and flood insurance income" attitude, so that the content service providers to bear most of the losses, due to the value-added business industry chain has been blocked, hindering the role of venture capital investment in the development of the industry. Due to the obstruction in the value-added business industry chain, the risk investment is hindered from playing its role, thus resulting in insufficient development of new business and lack of sufficient impetus for the development of value-added business, which is the main reason why many ICPs have turned a blind eye to the 3G feast. To put it bluntly, the reason why content service providers choose to remain silent in front of the topic of 3G is that the interaction between value-added service providers and telecom operators is still far from being realized, leading to a disconnect between R&D and user needs

"SMS" has become the "fifth media" in the E-era. "

Statistics show that in 2001, China's annual cell phone text messages sent 19 billion, according to the survey, China's fifteen to twenty-five-year-old young people are the main use of text message groups, the daily average of text messages to send five point two. People use their fingers to fiddle with the cell phone keypad at a rapid speed, but also at the same time, they are always transmitting all kinds of information and emotions. In China, which has nearly 200 million cell phone users, the "finger culture" derived from cell phone text messaging seems to have become a fashion overnight.

Some people have given "SMS" the honor of being the "fifth media", and the "finger culture" derived from SMS has been more and more widely recognized.

SMS: The Rise of the Fifth Media

Wen/Zhang Qi

As a basic business of wireless data communication, SMS makes up for the vacuum in application of wireless data demand, providing a new means of communication between people. At the same time, it has the advantages of low price, strong personality, customizable, saveable, replayable, and no loss of information when the phone is turned off. Because of these advantages, SMS is favored by cell phone users, especially young users. Its market in China from 2000 onwards, every year has doubled to multiply the increase, to the point of let a person jaw-dropping, who did not expect this one time up to 80 Chinese characters can only be sent to the small things, now can be so hot. With the development of technology, cell phone SMS can not only send text messages, and can be transmitted including images, sound, data and other forms of information content, its information capacity is also rapidly increasing.

With the gradual slowdown in the development of the mobile voice communications market, all parties involved in the operation of cell phone text messaging business have found the huge potential of the cell phone text messaging market, text messaging entertainment and leisure functions as a way of life as a strong rendering of the text message writer this high-income occupation. Another way to realize the potential of SMS is to combine it with the interaction of the other four major media, and make use of the platform created by the four major media to make cell phone SMS step into the door of the fifth media.

At this stage, the combination of SMS and mass media in China can be divided into the following two ways: the first is a combination of wireless communication operators, SMS content providers SP and cell phone users. That is to say, there are networks, newspapers, radio, television and other media as SP, through the wireless transmission network provided by China Mobile, China Unicom and these cell phone operators, to provide information to the end-users of cell phone text messages, cell phone operators and SP in accordance with the agreement of their respective access to the information service fees paid by the SMS users. This is a dispersive mode of communication; the second is a combination of cell phone operators, SMS platform service providers, mass media and cell phone users, cell phone users participate in media interaction by compiling and sending SMS to the SMS platform, the audience and media content through cell phone SMS to form an interaction between the cell phone operators, platform service providers and the media can be a share from this combination. This is a pooled communication model.

In the first mode, cell phone users can get information through SMS customization, SMS on demand, compared with the audience to accept the traditional media, cell phone SMS has the advantages of receiving simple and fast, more targeted. However, due to the limitation of technology, cell phone SMS still can not reach the breadth, depth and diversity of traditional media information, under the same cost, the information capacity obtained through cell phone SMS is much smaller than newspapers, not to mention radio and television broadcasting and network information outside the text information. But on the other hand, the advantages of cell phone SMS make it possible to receive the information content you want anytime, anywhere, and with the maturity of the technology and the reduction of the cost, the media contingency rate of cell phone SMS is increasing step by step.

Compared to the traditional three media, online media performs much better in the first combination. As SP SMS content providers, online media occupy the vast majority of the market share. Sina, NetEase, Sohu, Tom, the four major Internet portals are regarded as SMS as a profit-making tool, which invested a lot of human and material resources, according to industry estimates, these four portals accounted for more than 80% of the SP market share. The reason why the Internet can win the competition in the SP, based on the following reasons: First of all, the Internet itself is a collection of information, it can be a collection of text, audio and video, data, news, entertainment, games and so on rich multimedia information. With the massive content of the "sea of words", cell phone users can break through the limitations of a single media, customized all-encompassing SMS packages. Secondly, the Internet information itself has realized the digital formatting, for the same digital cell phone text messages, with the consistency and convenience of information transmission. Traditional media often establish their own websites before they can provide customized cell phone SMS services as SPs, which is an inevitable requirement for information digitization. Thirdly, the Internet can not only provide information in the traditional sense, but also provide SMS users with entertainment and virtual life through cell phones, which can be completely simulated and interactive. Users can engage in SMS chatting, shopping and gaming in the platforms provided by cell phones and websites. These features of cell phone texting have broad appeal among teens.

However, traditional media are not completely without advantages in the competition of SP. With their long-established credibility, audience loyalty, and specialized databases, traditional media are able to realize their potential in terms of content delivery, sending credible, professional, and approachable information to users. For example, in radio, people can customize traffic information from traffic radio, customize the latest music information from music radio, or customize professional SMS from the host of a time slot radio program about the content of the program; in TV, users can customize the previews of the whole program and the previews of a certain column from a certain TV station, and broadcast their favorite programs on-demand if the technology permits; in newspapers, users can also receive the same day previews of the program and the previews of a certain column from a certain TV station. In terms of newspapers, users can also receive the next day's newspaper headlines on the same day, and customize the professional information of a certain professional service area (e.g. weather forecast, license plate violation, discount information, etc.). In short, the era of cell phone SMS is the era of buyer's market, SP to occupy a place in the cell phone SMS market, the most important lies in the improvement of the information database and the professionalism of the information and irreplaceability, from the point of view of meeting the needs of the audience, to formulate a unique and attractive cell phone SMS service program.

The second model is a combination of cell phone operators, SMS platform service providers, mass media and cell phone users. This model has been more and more widely promoted in radio and television programs, compared to newspapers and networks dwarfed in this regard. The reason for this is that this pooled mode of communication is particularly mobilizing and interactive, with the need for instant communication. The host of the radio and television programs as a symbol of the program image and individual personality, you can achieve this communication and interaction, and the live broadcast of radio and television programs also make the SMS users to meet the need for instant communication with the program, in this regard, the newspaper does not have the advantage of the Internet itself is a multi-point dissemination, and seldom need the SMS convergent communication.

Taking radio as an example, listeners' SMS plays an important role in some radio programs. Since 2003, most city radio stations have set up cell phone SMS platforms one after another, and the listeners who send cell phone SMS mainly participate in the radio programs in the following ways: SMS quizzes, SMS polls, and SMS exchanges. The SMS quiz stimulates listeners to participate in the program through prizes, luck and curiosity, and there are many ways to determine the winners of the program, such as randomly determining the winners among the SMS listeners who have answered the questions correctly, sending the prizes to the listeners who have answered the questions correctly first, or sending the prizes according to the number of SMS sent by the cell phone or the points of the game. In order to increase the number of text messages sent, the program's questions are often easy or random, and some questions are simply "stupid questions". Most of the communication in these programs is very simple, mainly limited to the host asking questions and the audience answering questions, which is the primary stage of SMS participation in radio programs. The SMS polls on the radio are also conducted in a variety of ways, but the science and fairness of the polls are open to question.

There are fewer true SMS communication programs, which provide a space for listeners to fully communicate with the host and with other listeners through the SMS platform. The content of this type of program is variable, entertainment, music, puzzles, information exchange, factual comments, emotional communication programs can borrow the SMS platform to enable listeners to participate in the program, the formation of an active SMS community. These fine programs are often not overnight, but before the establishment of the SMS platform has formed a more mature style, the establishment of the SMS platform, so that they are more comfortable in the communication with the audience.

The establishment of the SMS platform makes the traditional reliance on phone calls and letters to communicate with the audience of the radio program has a broader world. First of all, the host through the selective release of text messages, quickly receive feedback from the audience, timely adjustment of the content of the exchange, etc., can be more flexible and active control of the program, which can not be done in the previous live radio program. Secondly, cell phone text messaging increases the opportunities for listeners to participate in the program and improves their motivation. Take a puzzle program of Xi'an Music Station "Lucky Golden Stall" as an example, before the establishment of the SMS platform, the program can only answer the phone calls of more than 30 listeners for each 77-minute program (removing 13-minute advertisement); after the establishment of the SMS platform, the program achieves an average of 91 interactions with the listeners every day. Third, communication has not only increased dramatically in terms of quantity, but also become more expansive in terms of quality. Taking "Lucky Golden Gear" as an example, before the SMS exchange, most of the hotline exchanges were limited to questions and answers, and there were very few exchanges between the hosts and the listeners outside of the puzzle topics. In the SMS exchange, most of the audience's communication content has nothing to do with the puzzle topic, but is more related to social topics, entertainment topics, personal topics between the host and the audience, as well as some opinions and suggestions, etc. These contents increase the audibility of the program. These contents increase the audibility of the program and make the communication between the host and the audience more active and more humanized. In addition, from the point of view of interpersonal communication, cell phone SMS communication can overcome the shyness of telephone communication and face-to-face communication, so that more people participate in the program to express their own ideas.

Interactivity has been enhanced, the content is richer, the radio station revenue increased, the inclusion of cell phone text messaging makes the radio from a certain point of view has been revived. Because of the strong communication, professionalism, and single-media expression characteristics of radio, it seems that cell phone text messaging is a more suitable medium of communication for radio than for television. TV's sensory stimulation of the audience is too complex, the audience in a full range of sensory stimulation, the entire central nervous system is paralyzed, y involved in it, the desire to communicate is reduced, coupled with cell phone text messaging form of singularity can not be adapted to the TV's sensory stimulation, so on the TV, it is very difficult to see the program consisting mainly of cell phone text messaging, the SMS participation in TV programs is mainly in the polling and guessing aspects, and some of the News and commentary programs will also allow SMS to participate in the program to participate in the discussion.

In the second combination of SMS and traditional media, broadcasting has benefited a lot, and TV media, with its vast reach and hot program ratings, has also profited a lot from the use of SMS for voting and guessing. Although SMS charging and SMS voting in the media has caused a lot of controversy, the audience still has the desire to interact with the media, participate in the program, and express their opinions.

With the expansion of the SMS function and the four media's more mature understanding of the SMS media, the content and form of cooperation between the two sides will be more varied and in-depth, the media can take advantage of the simple, fast, instant and interactive communication of SMS, SMS can also take advantage of the media's huge information database to realize the multi-directional interaction between the vast number of users of the SMS and the four major media, which is not perfect today, but still has a relatively high level of interaction with the media in the wireless network. technology is not perfect today, there are more restrictions, but regardless of the degree of technological development, the future of the emerging wireless media and the interaction between the existing media are limited. Limited traditional media to benefit from the emerging media, must be based on the communication characteristics of their respective media, resulting in different degrees of form and content of the interactive approach.

Features of the "fifth media"

There can be no new media without new communication technologies. Even with new communication technologies, there is still a need for new and widespread applications in order to promote the eventual emergence of new media.

The reason for the emergence of the fifth media reference lies in the profound impact of new communication technologies on the future communication world and mass communication media landscape. The debate and discussion of whether cell phones or cell phone text messaging is the fifth media has not been separated from the reality of the development of communication technology. However, the next more important question is: what is the fifth media? What are the characteristics of the fifth media?

Some commentators believe that the fifth media is the integration of the advantages of the newspaper "content in the family", the advantages of radio and television "free growth of users" and the network media "personalized service". "The fifth media is a new form of cultural media that integrates the advantages of newspapers and magazines in the home, the advantages of radio and television in the free growth of users, and the advantages of Internet media in the personalized service, and the ultimate ideal is to create a fifth media that complements the strengths of the four major media, namely, newspapers and magazines, broadcasting, television, and the Internet." Some commentators believe that the fifth media should be a new media on top of the Internet and radio and television networks, and accordingly believe that Internet broadcasting is the fifth media: "The fifth media's father is the Internet, and its mother is the radio and television networks, which are integrated by storage technology. The fifth media takes thousands of cultural websites as information, and integrates the website contents into digital broadcasting channels, and sends them to the home, and stores them through mirroring (hosting), so that the users can access them according to their needs. This kind of data dissemination not only inherits the strengths of rich sources and wide dissemination of the parent system, but also avoids the shortcomings such as channel congestion and inability to save." There is also the view that "the fifth media is a kind of public media with personalized direction, multimedia presentation and interactivity, which should be a new media with 'three-dimensional' powerful communication ability after the 'destructive creation' of the four types of media, namely, radio, television, newspaper and network. 'powerful communication ability of the new media." There are other points of view that network TV is the fifth media. But from the strict definition of communication to the inquiry, these things from the essence of the media do not have new features, can not be judged to be the fifth media.

The author believes that the fifth media is a new form of mass communication media with new overall characteristics compared with the first four mass communication media. The fifth media should be mobile media with access to the Internet, communications and radio and television networks. The emergence and use of the truly mature fifth media should be under the conditions of the convergence of the functions of the three networks. At that time, the new mass communication media should not purely rely on the Internet or telecommunication network or broadcasting and television network. As a cell phone, if the information it disseminates only relies on telecommunication networks or the Internet, then it is only a change of telecommunication network or Internet access from fixed mode to mobile mode, which has no essential change with the original fixed communication mode of telecommunication networks or the Internet. In this sense, cell phone SMS is only the prototype of the fifth media. In short, a new media can only become a new mass communication media when it does not only rely on any one of the three networks. Therefore, the author believes that the fifth media is a new kind of mass communication of information, both personal communication, Internet communication and other functions of the integration of innovative mass communication media.

When discussing the mobility of communication, there is a view that: "Mobile communication is not only a means of delivering news, but also a platform for publishing news. The dream of obtaining high-quality multimedia news at any time, anywhere, at will becomes a reality. Cell phones can only be considered the prototype of the fifth media, and if online media is the so-called fourth media, then mobile media may be the fifth media of the future." From a historical perspective, the first four media are the press, radio, television, and the Internet, each of which is revolutionary and innovative compared to the previous one, and alternative and complementary in a certain sense, thus shaping a new pattern of mass communication media existence. Mobile media (not only SMS) can be called the fifth media. The new access terminals with mobility to telecommunication networks, Internet and radio and television networks are mobile media. Mobile media should have the following characteristics:

Interactivity of the main body of communication. As the disseminators and receivers of fifth media information, they are characterized by interactivity, participation and autonomy. Through the fifth media, users can maximize their participation in the process of information dissemination, and reflect the initiative and autonomy of their cell phone information dissemination.

The mobility of the media. The mobility of the media is a common feature of the future of new media. The miniaturization of laptop computers, the miniaturization of cell phones as communication tools and the miniaturization of radio and television reception devices provide the fifth media with mobile, portable media.

Convergence of communication networks. Communication networks, the Internet and radio and television networks will integrate and support each other in the future. The realization of triple play will enable the access terminals of each individual network system to be smoothly connected to other networks.

Richness of content. On the basis of triple play, for the fifth media, the information it faces is from three networks, which greatly enriches the communication content of the fifth media.

Broadband transmission conditions. As a new media form with rich communication content, it will face the processing and transmission of massive information. And the dissemination of massive information requires a broadband transmission environment. This condition is even more critical for mobile media.

Adequacy of media capacity. Since the mobile media, there is no way to require fixed mass communication terminals as much as the requirement of its great content storage space, but to meet the due communication, Internet, radio, television and other content service requirements, or must.

So, in general, mobile media is not only a single communication tool, Internet media or radio and television media extension and development, but a variety of mass communication methods of integration and penetration. In addition, mobile media is not just a form of media, but a community, which should include mobile TV, cell phones (cell phones) and mobile computers with wireless Internet access, or other new communication media that integrate the above functions.

Potential and shortcomings coexist in the birth of cell phones can become the "fifth media"