You own prime time now

Punch Clock

Prime time used to be a big thing, sure it’s still a thing, but a diminishing one. You can probably remember when the 6 o’clock news mattered. You can remember when the sitcoms hit the airwaves at 7.30 and the movie at 8.30pm. They all made sense because we all worked until 5pm. The shops used to be closed from 12pm on Saturday, and not opened on Sunday. The clock, above all things defined the industrial era. Time zones themselves where invented to serve national railroads. The clock told us where to be and when. We had special clocks at work to punch to show when we arrived and left. And smart media worked around this. While time is the key asset in the attention economy, the clock itself is losing its power.

Old media still thinks the clock matters more than it does.

We still have prime time. We still have that time when we sit down and absorb or participate in entertainment, but the time we do it is determined by us. Maybe it’s 5-6pm on the train listening to a podcast. Maybe it’s 11pm in bed watching a Youtube video, maybe it’s placing ecommerce orders at 3pm. The enslavement that goes with prime time is finally evaporating. We have our own airwaves now.

While this trend has started with media (Tv, News, The Press, Web, Radio, Movies) it’s part of the great fragmentation in all commerce and culture. The only question left is whether we are doing business at times which serve history, or those we serve.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.