Column: Has television become radio? or the Media 'gangbang' of millennials

Globalization has penetrated into every pore of our society, and not even the domestic media landscape, which has been losing ground under its feet in recent years, could not avoid it, as it fails to capture young people. They live in a completely different media world, which has no connection with local reality. For them, there is no CNN, BBC, POP TV, RTV... and other media giants, but they have been completely replaced by stars of social networks. Their channels of receiving information are completely different. Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube take center stage. Facebook is just a necessary evil and just a tool for communication. My sons, aged 13 and 16, led me to think about this topic, who are just at the age when it is possible to talk with them about such matters. The older one, a 16-year-old, attends a secondary media school and is, so to speak, on the 'scene'. In fact, I noticed a pattern of behavior with them that all parents experience, the children don't answer the phone, but if they do, I can experience great discomfort... because I somehow disturb them in their monitoring of information. I'm messing with their natural information perception system. What is even worse, when we talk about novelties and news that cannot be read in Slovenia, we also start communicating in English. Millennials and all generations after them are a lost generation for the Slovenian media. They find the traditional media outdated, stupid and insincere. However, as someone who has been in the media for many years, I also shuddered a bit. Insincerity is actually what bothers this generation the most. Or rather, it generally repels her. This is also why I delved into the issue, which will be extremely interesting in the coming years and for which practically no one in the Slovenian space - at least in the media - is prepared. Few dare to think openly about it. So what's going on?

The television was replaced by the telephone and in a way it is television became radio. Millennials see it as nothing more than a screen or a computer screen on which they can connect to YouTube or they start Netflix and watch their favorite series. Thus, with the exception of live sports, the world of linear television no longer exists. But the reasons lie in psychology and the formats in which they get information. It is social networks and the possibility of being a medium with a tool that you carry in your pocket that gives the multitude of content creators (content creators) the possibility to be honest about the topics. To express their opinion, they publish authentic information, which is as it is, without the noise and plasticity or artifice of classical media. For millennials, for example, the mainstream news program - i.e. the classic reports - is a relic from another world. Unprecedented archaism. A concept that has survived and belongs to the long past.

And in a way I work to understand them when in the last period I try to capture their world. That's why I started with myself some time ago by experiment and focused only on receiving information with signals, which I acquire from social networks. And miraculously survived. Stupid TV show changed the program to YouTube, chosen based on my interests and hobbies, which offers me much more than television. Thus, YouTube is already my window to the world today, and I perceive information as much faster and more honest. To such an extent that lately I have been disturbed by the way information is given by the mainstream media. So me over and over again don't be surprised the first news of the main news program and how 'by' is all the rest of the news served to us by virtuous TV editors who aim so very generally and narrowly that I feel as if I live in North Korea and not in a modern European country.

TV has basically completely lost touch with the times. The editors look nostalgically at the times of big productions that big advertisers were willing to finance. But those times are over because advertisers are channeling their advertising budgets more and more often into the segment influencers and new ways. And that is also why I understand why our largest commercial television company strives to be able to buy it only via cable and paid for it. In all probability, those responsible began to realize that the times when it was TV advertising efficiently. And they expect a sharp drop in advertising revenue in the future. They simply began to realize that the world today is extremely different. Various cartel deals and conspiracy stories are superfluous. It's about survival. In fact, the bare survival of a medium out of touch with time. And television has been unlocked practically everywhere, only in Slovenia it seems that we live in a soap bubble.

But this is not only a problem of the media and not of local TV stations either. In the end, the problem is the country and the Slovenian language. With the globalization of the media landscape and the monopolies that are being created on a global level, jit is the Slovenian language that is most under attack. Young people are already a bilingual generation. Today, it doesn't matter to them whether they get the information in Slovenian or English. Worse, they even prefer the latter. But it all starts with the youngest, who are alien to cartoons, the only thing offered to them at the moment. The Slovenian offer is so modest that I can call it non-existent. And right here - in the cradle - our youngest live in another media reality. Already today they live globally and not locally._