Thin Line Between WANT & NEED – Especially When it is Free!

I was all over change before change was cool. I swear. But getting phone calls from former students, colleagues, and friends who are now out of work is challenges your attitudes toward change. Like a bunch of Americans, I am scrutinizing the WANT/NEED line. And for a media professional (yeah, I put myself in that category), it is a pretty sobering outlook because free is the new cheap. And that changes almost everything we do.

The cold walk to the end of my driveway to get three different newspapers (driven to my house every morning by three petroleum-powered paper pushers) is feeling pretty wasteful. The ads subsidize my news addiction, but they are all on the fast-track to the recycle bin. I could boot-up my laptop and stay in bed – all three of those newspapers and a host of others are available online – for free. Why write a check for a subscription when I can save trees? Is the convenience of newsprint NEED or WANT?

I am not fond of Bill Gates, but I thought I needed him. Life without Word or Excel seemed unthinkable. Until, I booted up Google Docs. Zero cost and zero frustration with wanting a document at work that I left on my computer at home. Sure I loose about 75% of the formatting tools I used to waste time with. So I am trying to decide whether pop-up thesaurus and word count features are WANTs or NEEDs.

And radio has seemed like a good deal until somebody let Pandora (http://www.pandora.com/) out of the box. Now I tell my iPhone what artist I want to hear and the Pandora app programs a channel just for me with her/his music and a lot of similar music. And there are no commercials! Now I am asking myself whether owning music is a WANT or a NEED.

But in front of my big TV this weekend, the WANT/NEED division became even more problematic. I have had an AppleTV (http://www.apple.com/appletv/)for about a year now. I bought it for about $250 when times were better. I was excited about HD video podcasts, but it has been kind of difficult. On Friday, Clate introduced me to Boxee (http://boxee.tv/). It is a free open source browser for my computer and Apple TV. So what? Here’s what. I can watch Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/), Joost (http://www.joost.com/) and almost any video podcast right on my Apple TV and TV. Sure, I had to download some free software and go through a couple of configuration steps. Now movies and almost any TV show I used to program my DVR to record are now on-demand – for free. I watched the movie “Rudy” and episodes of “Twin Peaks” (awesome 90’s show), and the “Daily Show” from my couch instead of my office chair. Now that coax cable line is snaking right down the no-man’s land between WANT and NEED.
OK, none of this is really free. I wouldn’t have any of it if it weren’t for that DSL line delivering me internet. But all this free stuff makes that internet bill a lot more palatable And isn’t it strange how quickly we have shifted what was a luxury (connectivity) to a necessity? And what we used to consider essential (old media) is now feeling kind of extravagant.