Editors Letter – August 2017

Unless, of course, you are a subscriber to the digital version of this magazine, chances are you’re reading this on good old, glossy 95GSM paper and four-colour ink based on a process that has a direct ancestor in the press that Johannes Gutenberg invented in 1440. Therefore, it would seem that we aren’t possibly in the best position to talk about disruptive media. But we will anyway. Without wanting to sound like a video rental store manager in denial about this “fad” of a concept around watching movies online, after all, people have been talking about the death of print for a number of years now… there is a distinction between the experience and the pathway to that experience, and what is actually the thing being disrupted. These days, there is little difference to the actual experience of watching a hired DVD on your big screen and watching the same movie streamed in 1080p from Netflix. It is, however, a completely different process to drive down to the DVD store, search through some shelves, pay the person at the checkout, wait for them to find the DVD and then drive back home before firing up the DVD player than it is to search through the latest movies on Netflix and simply press play on the movie that strikes your fancy. In this new video on demand world, there is still literally that demand for content and there will always be a demand for local and relevant stories, and local talent. In this issue, we profile the rise of a local VOD player in The Vision Beyond Television and the growing potential for new New Zealand talent to shine. This story is, of course, packaged in with a whole lot of other local and international content written from a uniquely New Zealand perspective and that will always be the M2 experience regardless of how you access it.