While reading the recent review of a new book in the New York Times Book Review, we at VideoAge‘s Water Cooler started relating it to the status of the current television industry. This is despite the fact that the book, How The World Really Works, is entirely unrelated to television. Its author is Vaclav Smil, a 78-year-old Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.
In the book, Smil is described as an anti-forecaster, and is contemptuous of any predictions. Living with uncertainty, after all, he declares, “remains the essence of the human condition.”
Smil’s book is being brought to the attention of Water Cooler readers because it could also explain VideoAge‘s challenging June/July 2022 front cover story about the proliferation of what Smil dismisses in his book (according to the Times‘ reviewer) as “self-proclaimed experts,” and could apply to those who have already decided that broadcast television is basically defunct.
In one of the professor’s non-predictions, he explains how forecasts lie in the eye of the beholder. For example, he asks, “Should policies designed to favor the greatest number of people account for people not yet born?”
Smil also sneers at proponents of a greener earth: “We cannot feed the world without relying on fossil fuel.” Later, according to the reviewer, he adds: “We are slaves to fossil fuel.”
Similarly, proponents of a new television world without broadcast television are urged to read the June/July Issue of VideoAge, which, among other stories, includes a review of the recent in-person (and quite vibrant) L.A. Screenings. According to various predictions, broadcast television should be defunct — but, as has been demonstrated, it’s far from that. Now, one might argue that upholding the survival of TV broadcasting could be considered a prediction, but it, in effect, falls in the realm of a non-prediction/prediction advocated by Smil, since it affirms a form of status quo.
The June-July Issue of VideoAge also includes a preview of both the upcoming NATPE Budapest and the August 2022 premiere of MIP Africa in Cape Town, South Africa.
In addition, the Issue contains five other stories that can’t be missed, including one about French TV’s explosion of M&A activities, a piece about the whirlwind of 15 international TV trade shows between the months of June and September, 2022, and the controversial My2¢ editorial.
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