THIRD ANNUAL SCREENS ISSUE - MediaPost

photos: heliodisplay
While the patrons enjoyed the refreshments that Koster and Bial
pushed both there and at their beer garden a few blocks south (alcohol
having better margins than ticket sales, after all), “an unusually
bright light fell upon the screen,” as The New York Times wrote the
next day. As they watched, the audience was treated to the image of
“two precious blonde young persons of the variety stage … doing
the umbrella dance with commendable celerity.” The audience
roared its enthusiasm — and with that, the first public exhibition
of a motion picture, the screen as conduit for visual entertainment
entered the American public’s consciousness for the first time.
That was more than a century ago. Screens have changed a
great deal since then. But they’ve changed not nearly so much
as they’re about to now, and not in the next 100 years, but in the
next 10, or maybe even the next one or two.
It took nearly 50 years for movie screens to give way to television
screens on anything approaching a widespread basis. What was the
IO2Technology
provides a screenless,
two-dimensional
experience for users.
The technology starts
at $50,000
experience of a community was now something more intimate, an
activity one took part in with family or perhaps a few friends. Nearly
50 years after that, smartphones made screens into a portable experience,
changing the nature of our interactions with them again.
Having our own personal viewport to the rest of the world altered
how we interacted with information and each other as well.
But although we’ve seen the birth of movie screens, television
screens, IMAX screens, flat screens, hi-def screens, touchscreens
and more, we’re now on the brink of a revolution, in both the technology
and use of screens, that will change how entertainers and
marketers do business for many decades to come. Not only will the
revolution be televised, but it may be worn like a piece of clothing,
rolled up into the size and shape of a small pen or simply appear as
if by magic in front of your eyes.
What are the implications of this new age of attention? There
are many. Entertainers and marketers both will need to be agile
Spring 2012 MEDIA MAGAZINE 53