We are being told again and again that traditional media as we know it is going to die, this makes me sad and makes the people working in the sector even more depressed. I like traditional media, I buy a real newspaper a couple of days a week, I listen to the radio everyday and I watch TV almost every evening. The problem for the industry is the fact that I’m in my 30′s.

In a sweeping generalization I assume that anyone under 25 sees a newspaper as something that their parents use to wrap the cold ashes from the previous evenings fire. Radio is what housewives listen to in the morning and most of the time young people spend watching TV is accompanied by a laptop or iPad.

An interesting headline appeared in The Irish Times last week “Analogue age set to expire amid economic gloom”, I got a burst of excitement, finally the media industry has seen the writing on the wall and they are going to focus their energy on the hugely exciting digital communications revolution and not holding on to the fraying thread that is traditional media. Finally digital media will become an easier sell, it will start to become more integrated as everyone in Ireland will become more savvy, agencies and clients will ‘get it’ and Ireland will play catch up with the rest of the world, god forbid even surpass them and start to innovate! This is it!

I shouldn’t have been so self centered to think that it was a headline written especially for me. The analogue they were referring to was the analogue TV signal, RTE are turning it off in 2012. This is happening 14 years after Sky launced their digital service across the pond. Why is it taking the media, advertising and marketing industries in this country so long to embrace digital media, sadly I think its fear of the unknown and fear of letting others in to work with them on building what is the inevitable future of media in Ireland. Its the lack of knowledge and vision that the people at the top have that is holding the industry back. How can they educate and sell this to their clients if they don’t understand it themselves?

Luckily, change is inevitable. I wait patiently along with the thousands of others who are ready to work together to offer something that is has endless possibilities.