Narrowcasting

Narrowcasting refers to a customized version of broadcasting that targets information to a specific, narrowly defined group of recipients—or, at the extreme, to a specific individual—at a particular time and place. Since Internet-based media offer the ability to customize information delivery on an unprecedented scale, these media potentially facilitate the extension of narrowcasting to an increasing variety of informational services and products.

In a documentary on the origins of broadcasting, Mike Adams notes that the term narrowcasting is as old as broadcasting itself, and was invoked by radio pioneer Charles Herrold in the early 1900s to refer to point-to-point wireless transmissions. (The term broadcasting was adapted from the description of agricultural machinery that distributed seed across a wide area.) Narrowcasting later came to characterize the fragmentation of the broadcast audience. It has been used, for example, to describe the increasing reliance of radio upon niche markets as television gained ascendancy during the 1950s. Later, the term was adapted to describe network television's response to competition from cable stations that fragmented the television market and fostered programming tailored to specific demographic and interest groups (women, sports fans, and so on). In this context, narrowcasting represents a market response to a multi-channel environment, in which it is difficult for any one channel to consistently monopolize the majority (or a significant minority) of the viewing audience. As media scholars Sut Jhally and Bill Livant argue, segmenting the audience has the added commercial benefit of allowing advertisers to target viewers more efficiently.

Although narrowcasting relies heavily on some form of interactivity (since narrowcasters need to know enough about their audience to customize content), it no longer refers to two-way, point-to-point transmission. Rather, it most frequently describes a one-to-many model of distribution, wherein audience members receive personalized or niche content. Customized “push” technologies that allow users to specify what type of information they are interested in and then to receive, for example, a customized electronic newspaper tailored to their interests, represent one way in which digital media facilitate narrowcasting as a means of allowing users to filter the rapidly proliferating quantity of available information.

Digital narrowcasting relies heavily on interactive technology, as well as on computer-based techniques for processing consumer data and customizing content. Whereas developing individualized radio or television content may once have been prohibitively expensive, digitization makes it increasingly easy. Bill Gates, for example, anticipates that one day television programming and advertising will be readily customizable to provide viewers with the cast members of their choice. Michael Lewis, writing for The New York Times, describes the way in which digital television anticipates the autonomization of this process: “Intelligent” TVs will learn viewer preferences and seek out relevant programming. Eventually, information about preferences can be used to create custom-tailored programming.

One possible result of such developments is that the anticipated convergence of electronic media on the Internet may be accompanied by the fragmentation of the mass audience into narrower and more specifically defined categories. Digital-television services already facilitate the ability of audience members to customize their viewing menus and to continue the process of time-shifting enabled by VCRs. In an era of narrow-casting, content providers would no longer assume a mass audience that consumes the same programming at the same time. Rather, content could be customized not just according to the audience members' tastes, but also according to their location in time and space. Digital radio, for example, might be able to provide a tourist driving through a foreign city with information about restaurants or movies playing in the vicinity. This information could be further customized to fit the user's profile of culinary and cinematic tastes.

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