“Even the line between electronics and print will be hard to draw as we move into an era of condensed transmission of information, electrostatic printing and the all-purpose home communications console.” That was the prediction printed in the March 1968 issue of Nieman Reports in an essay by Dr. Leo Bogart of the American Newspaper Publishers Association about newspaper advertising in the year 2000.
Some of Bogart’s prognostications seem eerily prescient, including his idea that “all the canned entertainment for a month can be compacted and transmitted in a few seconds for storage within a home recording unit, to be played back when the viewer wants it.” It’s not hard to see those ideas coming to fruition all across the media landscape today, from Netflix spinning off its DVD mailing business to Amazon’s mediacentric Kindle Fire tablet and the ubiquity of DVR boxes in the home.
But while Bogart’s grasp of technological advances seems spot-on, he fails to fully imagine the scope of disruption that they might have on advertising revenue. He writes that “we have confidence in newspapers’ ability to adapt to the revolutionary changes which are under way today in the technology of communication … . The future of newspaper advertising is not without its uncertainties, but it is bright.”
