The digital world has so disrupted the business models of newspapers, radio, television, music and even Hollywood that the yin and yang of mass media and mass marketing are flying apart. We are in the midst of total collapse of the media infrastructure we have taken for granted for 400 years.

1. The Chaos Scenario:
Now Less Chaotic
Frank Jurden
October 2011

2. The Chaos Scenario
1
So begins Bob Garfield’s 2009 book “The Chaos
Scenario.” In characteristically rococo prose,
Garfield predicted a looming dystopia in which
broadband access and consumers’ insatiable
desire for content would conspire to upend the
business models of broadcast, print and news
media. And as old-media businesses go, so go the
businesses of brand marketers, media buyers and
advertising agencies.
The Chaos Scenario:
Now Less Chaotic
Frank Jurden
October 2011
A cautionary tale, “The Chaos Scenario” was just
one title in the then-burgeoning genre on the
subject of old-media meltdown and its impact on
the advertising industry. Harry Blodget (publisher
of “Silicon Alley Insider”) and Michael Arrington
(founder and former Editor in Chief of “Tech-
Crunch”) and numerous other industry observers
all outlined equally disquieting predictions1
about
the future of media.
The question is: Were the doomsayers right?
Here on the verge of 2012, just how did these
predictions turn out?
“The digital world has so disrupted the
business models of newspapers, radio,
television, music and even Hollywood
that the yin and yang of mass media
and mass marketing are flying apart.
We are in the midst of total collapse of
the media infrastructure we have taken
for granted for 400 years.”

3. 2
Rivers of Blood
Go back to the period leading up to 2009.
The dramatic tension at the center of “The Chaos
Scenario” is the incestuous relationship between
the traditional media industry and the traditional
marketing industry.
For decades prior, consumers enjoyed content in
all its forms because the costs of production and
distribution were largely subsidized by advertisers.
This historic quid pro quo had been in place since
the dawn of broadcast all the way to the present day.
Content drew audiences, advertisers subsidized
content, and audiences tolerated advertising in
exchange for free (or nearly free) entertainment.
At least that’s how it worked in the past. Fast-forward
to the digital age, when Garfield and others find
evidence for shrinking audiences, taking with it the
entire media-advertising complex. Garfield (2009)
finds “rivers of blood” (pg. 25) in the magazine
business for example, citing the title closures, layoffs
and circulation downturns at Condé Nast, Ziff Davis,
Meredith and Hearst Publishing. Gross advertising
pages, a broad measure of magazine-industry health,
fell 22 percent in 2009 on top of a double-digit drop
in 2008. Titles like Playgirl, PC Magazine, CosmoGirl
and dozens of others are now gone; weeklies like U.S.
News & World Report are now monthly; Life maga-
zine ditched its iconic oversized format in favor of the
a more economical standard magazine size.
Over in newspapers, sadly, the story is worse.
McClatchy, The Tribune Company and dozens of
smaller entities have been driven to bankruptcy. Paid
circulation, a broad measure of industry vitality, fell
from 55 million to 45 million1
in the decade between
1999 and 2009. News Corporation took an $8.4
billion write down of assets after its acquisition of the
The Wall Street Journal. Even lowly classified ads
— the industry’s cash cow — dried up, largely eviscer-
ated by Craigslist.org, eBay.com, Monster.com,
Autotrader.com and others. Rivers of blood, indeed.
The Curious Case of Television
What about television? Surely Netflix, Hulu and
YouTube have had equally destructive effects on the
TV value chain.
In fact, the opposite appears to be the case. The
situation might even be described as “pretty good.”
Nielsen recently reported that TV viewership in the
first part of 2011 actually increased over the previous
year3
, contrary to what pessimists predicted. Across
all TV homes, and including time-shifted viewership,
the number of TV watchers grew from 380 million
to 395 million per month. Forrester found a similar
trend: Americans reported spending more time
in front of TV in 2010 compared to 2005 levels (a
growth of 5 percent).
And where there are consumers, you’ll find advertis-
ers and ad dollars. In 2010, local, cable and network
TV all turned in positive numbers, handily beating
newspapers and magazines in ad-dollar growth
(Figure 1). The 2012 TV upfront market — that specu-
lative marketplace in which advertisers buy national
airtime in advance of the coming year — is expecting
healthy price increases due to high demand5
.
It’s clear that for the vast majority of Americans,
TVremains the dominant force, especially for local TV
programming6
.
Local TV Online Cable TV Network TV Audio
Newspapers
Magazines
17%
14%
8%
7%
-6%
6.0%
1%
Figure 1. Percent Change in Ad Revenue 2009-2010
1 For an overview, see http://www.businessinsider.
com/2007/8/its-easy-to-say
2 Newspaper Association of America: Newspaper Circulation
Volume (naa.org)
3 The Nielsen Company: “Cross-Platform Report” (Q1, 2011)
4 Forrester: “Understanding the Changing Needs of the US
Online Consumer” (2010)
5 Advertising Age: “TV Upfront Headed Toward Double-Digit
Gains” (May, 2011)
6 The Pew Research Center: “The State of the News Media”
(2011)
Source: SNL Kagan, eMarketer, Kantar Media, Radio Advertising Bureau,
Publishers Information Bureau, National Newspaper Association, AIA/Kelsey.

4. The Chaos Scenario
3
dividing their attention between the TV screen and
other screens big and small, all without any appre-
ciable decline in TV consumption. Forrester vividly
documents this trend (Figure 2). Whereas internet
usage in its sample grew steadily over the past five
years to become comparable to TV viewing in time
spent, this growth came about without displacing
TV viewing7
. The Forrester results paint a scene in
which consumers are checking box scores on their
mobile and moving “Remember the Titans” to the
top of their Netflix queue on the laptop, all while
taking in the big game on the biggest screen in the
household — the TV.
Three Screens and a Cloud
Did the digital revolution miss TV? Of course not.
Digital’s effect on TV consumption simply differs
from its effect on other media.
With print particularly, the expansion of digital
media displaced the older forms, luring consumers
to the new channel and leaving the older form to
wilt. Think of it as a kind of “either/or” effect: I will
read national news either in print or online, but not
both. Digital has clearly dethroned print media just
as “The Chaos Scenario” predicted.
But in terms of TV, the role of digital media
appears supplemental. Rather than “either/or” it
might be described as a “both/and” effect: Consum-
ers are running multiple screens simultaneously,
Watching TV
Percent change
(2005 to 2010)
Using the
Internet
Listenig to
the radio
(not online)
Reading
newspapers
(not online)
Reading
magazines
(not online)
15
12
9
6
3
0
5% 121% -15% -26% -18%
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
“In a typical week, how many hours do you spend doing each of the following?”
Source: Forrester North American Technographics* Benchmark Surveys, 2005 to 2010
Figure 2. U.S. Household Media Consumption 2005-2010
7 Forrester: “Understanding the Changing Needs of the US
Online Consumer” (2010)

5. The Chaos Scenario
4
The (Less Chaotic) Future
And so it’s clear that the predictions of widespread
chaos in the media-advertising complex have missed
the mark, at least in the context of how we consume
video. Yesterday’s vision of tomorrow assumed a
destructive dialectic in which the new would extin-
guish the old in the same way automobiles turned
buggy whips into charming anachronisms.
On the eve of 2012, TV has proven to be anything but
an anachronism. One might say we live in a golden
age with TV enduring the onslaught of digital media
largely undiminished. Content creators now have
the unprecedented opportunity to reach a growing
audience with more content on more screens than
ever before.
Implications for Agencies
In this post-“Chaos” world, brand managers and
agencies must go back and re-examine simplistic
assumptions about consumers’ abandonment of old
media; reality has proven to be more eclectic and
complicated.
The question now becomes: How might agencies’
creative approach evolve in this eclectic media
space? The notion of integrated creative now has
to be redefined to be less about a monolithic idea
existing in a single channel with “matching luggage”
versions online. In a multiscreen world, the standard
now must embrace a notion of complementary
creative — experiences that combine in such a way
across channels as to enhance or emphasize the
others’ qualities. Complementarity doesn’t duplicate
message points from one medium in another. Rather,
it provides completeness or perfection of the experi-
ences from one channel in another.
The publication of “The Chaos Scenario” and the
seemingly inevitable death of old media might
have tempted some digital purists to take a victory
lap back in 2009. The media reality of 2012 should
attenuate that desire. Storytelling has always been
important in advertising. The next generation of
agency storytellers will be masters of the uncom-
plicated narrative arc across several channels,
each chapter with its own value, and each chapter
enhanced by connection to the larger brand narrative.

6. Frank’s background spans both the academic and agency worlds.
He’s been with VML since 2005 and has also served as Lecturer in
Marketing at the Graduate School of Business at the University of
Kansas in 2004 where he teaches in the MBA program. Prior to
his appointment at VML, He has served as Managing Partner for
consulting firm Hudson + Duke Communications, as Director of
Research and Planning for ad agency Barkley, Evergreen & Partners,
and as Visiting Scholar in Quantitative Methods at the University of
Michigan.
Group Director of Planning
VML New York
fjurden@vml.com
+1.816.210.0516
Frank H. Jurden
The Chaos Scenario
5