Only is the new 4 Letter word

In response to Ouimets blog about the CBC myspace and some of the resulting comments I felt compelled to point out something that should be obvious.

If you're in media, any media (film, tv, radio, print, web...), you can no longer afford the word 'only' when referring to any chunk of your audience or potential audience. As the 'million channel universe' and the world of 'everything on demand' unfold the audience will become more and more divided.

It's simple, if you have access to all of the programming ever produced anywhere in the world how good will something have to be to get your attention? What's more, because we have been advertised too so heavily most people have become fairly jaded by it. Word of mouth is already the only consistently reliable form of advertising. If a friend, family member, co-worker etc., tells you something is good you will be much more likely to investigate. This is only going to become more true as time goes on.

This is not some far fetched fantasy of the future, it is now. Every day, largely through the internet, more and more programming is available to people worldwide and unless Canada is going to build a system of filters and firewalls similar to China's the CRTC can do very little to regulate the flow. If the CRTC says to Internet Broadcaster X - you can't do that in Canada, Internet Broadcaster X just gets a new web site in the US, or England, or..wherever moves the site to the new server and resumes as usual.

Audiences must be carefully cultivated, moved to loyalty and jealously guarded. The CBC is probably in a better position than anyone in Canada to do this, but you can no longer afford to say it's only ___ viewers.