The disappearing audience

"We need more readers, not more writers," says Manjari Prabhu. The desi Agatha Christie, as she is known, was speaking at a book launch in Pune earlier this year.

Ms Prabhu, an author of 21 books, a short filmmaker, and TV producer was talking in her capacity as the founder/director of the Pune International Literary Festival. Her struggle is to get people to come and just listen to authors without wanting to become one themselves.

Inadvertently, Ms Prabhu has touched upon one of the biggest challenges the media and entertainment ecosystem faces in a rapidly digitising world. The boundaries between the entertainer and the entertained, the informed and the informer, the writer and the reader, the listener and the musician are collapsing. The ability to feel, touch, or talk to your media idols, to stars, or to people with expertise through social media and videos has made people want to be the creator, not just the viewer, listener or reader.

The democratisation that first the internet and then the rise of social media brought on has propelled several changes. Many were not very evident when the internet took off in 1995, or when Google search came in the late nineties, or when streaming video arrived with YouTube in 2005. Even when social media platforms like Facebook (2004) and Twitter (now X in 2006) emerged, things were not as clear. The sum of it is now hitting both the commercial and creative part of the global media economy. Of all the changes, two big ones are now playing out in their full glory.