By the year 2020, all media in the world will be digital. This is the prediction of leading Australian media executive Harold Mitchell AC, who addressed the QUT Business Leaders' Forum today (March 8) at the Hilton Brisbane.
Mr Mitchell said that while the introduction in the 1950s of television changed the world, and the nature of products and services, the biggest change of our lifetime began just over a decade ago.
He recalled being told, in 2000, by his then 30-year-old son that things were changing.
"I knew this digital world was going to be the next biggest change quite possibly since the printing press. We were dealing ... with mass media, mass markets," said Mr Mitchell, who founded Mitchell & Partners in 1976 and is now executive chairman of Aegis Media Pacific.
"Twenty years ago if you had a Mercedes you knew what it was - a black or a white one. Right now there are 50 different types of Mercedes because it is the world of the individual.
"So what I did was, I started the first digital business in this country. Google was one year old and Rupert (Murdoch) said it would never work."
Mr Mitchell said that the media he grew up with was "always one way".
"That is, the television was in the corner and you simply watched it ... Suddenly the digital world changed all that because it was two ways. You could dial in; it could tell you something; you could push a button and buy something in New York as a result of it," he said.
He said the new world was about content, but what would change was the delivery systems.
"People will still want to know about content, about ideas, and that's been the way for all the centuries. This has been the greatest change simply to the system of distribution... that is what the digital age is," Mr Mitchell said.
"The big newspaper publishers are now getting it ... they write the story and a second later, instead of waiting for printing presses, press the button, it goes out on the web and there it is."
During the QUT Business Leaders' Forum, Mr Mitchell also criticised the media inquiry report presented to the federal government last week by Ray Finkelstein.
"They believe if the media is not economic and needs support, perhaps the government will have to ... financially support (them)," he said.
"The notion that the government has to support major media outlets just to keep them the way they think they should be is something thoroughly endorsed by the people of both Russia and Cuba and I'm not sure we're ready to join that."
Mike Smith, chief executive officer of ANZ, will address the next QUT Business Leaders' Forum on May 8, 2012, at the Hilton Brisbane. Tickets are on sale from today through the Hilton Box Office at (07) 3231 3231 or events.brisbane@hilton.com.
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Media contact: Michaela Ryan, QUT media officer, 07 3138 4494 or michaela.ryan@qut.edu.au
