The brilliant thing about the Internet — and the thing that separates it from any other medium or form of communication — is the speed at which information can be passed from person to person and group to group.
Put a link to something cool — a video, a game, anything — on a message board and it can be seen by dozens or even hundreds of people within the next hour. Chances are, many of them will regularly visit other message boards and put the link on there, and so on and so on. A link can go from you to someone else on a board you've never heard of within a matter of minutes, which means that popular internet memes can flare up and die away within days, or grow and grow over the course of months.
Of course, the Old Media are restricted to publication and broadcast dates, which means that (compared to the net, at least) most of the news it delivers is old stuff. But when it comes to the 'net, the issue is exacerbated — most papers and networks are run by older people for whom the Internet is a tool, rather than a pastime, meaning that Internet-related stories can be months (sometimes years) old before they actually make it to transmission.
So while you and your cyberpals may have known about Second Life since its launch in 2003, it wasn't until 2007 — a full four years later — that the UK broadcast and print media jumped onto the bandwagon.
As time goes on, those higher up the media food chain will be replaced by Internet-savvy types, which may destroy this trope completely. As of the mid-late 2000s, however, those who grew up with the Internet through their teenage years are only just getting onto the lower rungs of the Old Media ladder... and that's assuming Old Media will even still be around by the time those people get the chance to be in charge of them.
Compare #EngineeredHashtag, when companies try to appear hipper by marketing with hashtags. Contrast New Media Are Evil, when newer forms of entertainment are seen as evil/harmful. It's part of the reason why Title, Please! exists; episode titles are rarely shown on-screen due to assuming the viewer has an interactive program guide.
Examples:
Films — Live-Action
- Shattered Glass: This is the Central Theme of the film. The New Republic is a veritable old stalwart of print media, with a long and proud (and slightly snobby) tradition of being, among other things, "the in-flight magazine of Air Force One" and a distinguished reputation for accuracy and honesty. Forbes Digital Tool, the online magazine that exposes Glass's fraud with Hack Heaven, as a representative of the burgeoning online media environment, is the new kid on the block and is initially wary about taking on the New Republic. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the New Republic and its traditions are completely ill-equipped to cope with someone like Glass, particularly since one of the ways in which the threads on "Hack Heaven" get pulled is when the Forbes journalists... do a basic search for the company name through Yahoo. In Real Life, the whole episode actually was one of the key moments that established online media as a serious competitor to traditional print media rather than just a novelty.
- Truth (2015): The authenticity of the documents used to support the story in question was first doubted by bloggers.
Literature
- Welcome to Night Vale: Leann Hart hasn't adapted well to the rapidly shifting media enviroment of the 21st century.
Live-Action TV
- America's Got Talent:
- Averted; the first seven seasons had a special round where people audition over a social networking site (originally MySpace, later YouTube). In Seasons 5-7, the guest performances for the YouTube results shows are viral video stars as well. This was dropped after Season 7, as beyond Jackie Evancho they've almost never produced anything good from these special MySpace/YouTube shows (and the S7 show was a particularly big failure); Season 9 has its own home-submission contest but run through The Today Show rather than a website.
- In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the judges to hold the final round of auditions online. These auditions (featuring acts who were due to audition in person before most American states went into lockdown) were screened on YouTube weeks before they were aired on the show itself.
- Daredevil (2015): In season 1, Ben Urich is depicted as an old school journalist for the Bulletin, insistent on writing serious hard-hitting pieces about things that actually matter in the city as opposed to worthless fluff pieces. In his first scene in "Rabbit in a Snowstorm", Ben's editor Mitchell Ellison bitterly points out to Ben that the Bulletin needs to catch up with modern forms of journalism.
Ben Urich: There used to be a time when the people in this building wrote the hell out of the news.
Mitchell Ellison: Everybody we know is making twice what we are, writing from blogs, working from home in their underwear. We're hanging on by our fingertips, Ben. Do you really want to be greasing that ledge? - Game Shakers: A kids' TV sitcom trying to play catchup with online gaming culture and YouTube personalities. The show also features guest appearances from YouTube personalities like ProJared, GloZell, and David Moss AKA Lasercorn from Smosh Games.
- House of Cards (US): Subverted. Tom Hammerschmidt, editor at The Washington Herald, makes a passionate but irrelevant defense of why newspapers still matter, while modern Intrepid Reporter Zoe Barnes doesn't fit in at the stuffy newspaper at all. Yet in season 4, it's Hammerschmidt's use of the old methods that expose Frank's corruption.
- The Hour (CBC): Averted. George is completely New Media-savvy, probably due to his young age compared to many other talk/news show hosts and his experience at MuchMusic and on radio.
- iCarly: It's a basic-cable SitCom/KidCom about kids who do a webshow. Every character seems to have the latest digital gadgetry. The show came years after people had already been doing web shows and the rise of Youtube.
- Last Man Standing (2011): In-Universe, Mike was originally a world traveler doing photo shoots of their equipment while on location in exotic locales, all to be published in their catalog (which was rated best catalog by Catalog Magazine). Ed put a stop to it as they needed more focus on their website and internet marketing, which led to the Once an Episode vlogs. In the fifth season opener, Mike was shown doing vlogs while on location in another round of travel and photo shoots, even mentioning an upcoming catalog release, indicating there was still a need for the old media in the new age.
- Sam & Cat: After the Twitter/Facebook hybrid "The Slap" being featured on Victorious, the show headed even more into promoting Twitter-style social media, with the episode titles taking the form of #HashTags.
- Sports Night: In "Bells and a Siren", Casey can't believe all the other computers in the office are connected to the same network, and he can look up info on stock prices anywhere.
- Victorious: The send-up of the Filipino Michael Jackson "Thriller" Prison Dance scene
in the special "Locked Up!", with the original being at least four years old and probably pre-dating iCarly!
- The West Wing: Discussed in "Ellie". When talking about the Surgeon General's web chat, Toby and C.J. lay into Josh for not calling them and/or doing anything to stop the Surgeon General before she made her remarks about marijuana. Josh points out that she was communicating live and online in a web forum away from the White House, not doing a traditional-style interview as a one-on-one with a reporter, and there was no way any of them could have stopped her in time.
Video Games
- Second Life: For a few years, Second Life was a media darling and a headline commonly ripped from. Dozens of corporations set up in-game buildings and facilities. Then it eventually got around that nearly everybody uses it for sex...
Webcomics
- Com Media: The Prints have been rivals to media newer than themselves since forever.
Web Videos
- Becoming YouTube: Discussed and Parodied, especially in "What YouTube Isn't."
Real Life
- The Academy Awards have struggled with cratering ratings from The New '10s onward because, with the Internet and smartphone technology in particular, people can seek out the winners in real-time without having to actually watch the three-hour-plus ceremony. Despite the Oscars trying to throw multiple gimmicks at the wall in hopes of earning back viewers, the modern way of information has only left viewers who actually watch for the ceremony rather than "who won?", resulting in the broadcast going from drawing 43 million in 2014 to below 20 million viewers in The New '20s.
- Bitcoin, as well as cryptocurrencies in general, have had a long struggle in getting recognized as truly legal, government-approved currency because of the lack of proper technology, channels, and general trust. The ideal fantasy behind such technology is that of being a form of true Global Currency free from the oversight and regulation from governments and banks, but unsurprisingly, governments and banks are usually indifferent of the technology at best and outright prohibitive at worst. In addition to the various infrastructural and social problems cryptocurrencies produce (inherent volatility, vulnerability to use as parts of scams, environmental concerns, etc.), the inherent anonymity their systems are designed to charter makes it perfect to use for illegal transactions and difficult for any form of accountability.
- The L.A. Complex: Averted. It's been renewed on the strength of online views at TheCW.com.
- NBC: Olympic broadcasts are a textbook example. They are often Live but Delayed by many, many hours (around 16 hours for the Beijing opening ceremonies) until the American prime time when the most advertising dollars are. NBC recently persuaded the International Olympic Committee to schedule more popular events live at times more acceptable to Americans to avoid spoilers, but even then the east-west time zone delay means that half the country is spoiled thanks to the news. Finding other methods to watch the Olympics is becoming increasingly common among fans, such as watching the Olympics from other countries or from sponsored websites.
- Trash Taste: Usually brought up when conversing the evolution of the Japanese popular culture industry. Episode 13's discussion on anime/manga media piracy suggests this is what is really at play; that traditional business metrics of a show/series' success (i.e., DVD sales and merchandising) are slowly becoming less accurate. Hence, pirate streaming might indeed cause the spread and awareness of a show, but it may not automatically translate to sales (which is what matters). However, such a divide causes a massive wedge between anime production companies, legal streamers (like paywalled Netflix and Crunchyroll), and international anime communities. In turn, it is precisely companies who try to provide accessible yet legal alternatives online (such as Kadokawa through Bookwalker—for manga at least) who are managing to bridge this gap.
