What Bob Barocci, President and CEO of the ARF, called 'the first annual AMS' left the first day audience strung between the oft-expressed desire for multi-media, multi-platform audience research and the reality that media research is still confined to its traditional silos - though there are signs of movement. Maybe tomorrow's crowded programme will provide some answers.

Broadway's Hudson theatre, built in 1903, was once described as 'among the handsomest theatres in the country', and provided an elegant setting for discussion of a media world Barocci characterized as one of constant and mounting uncertainty.

This was detailed by Jeffrey Cole, Director of the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, in a keynote address that reviewed the influence of the internet. He drew on six years of panel research in the US, plus its extension into more than 20 other countries world-wide.

Cole identified four key trends:

• The 'difference' caused by internet experience is disappearing: broadband is now the key influence on change - and this, in turn, will soon vanish.
  


• The internet is now an essential part of everyday life, permeating media, politics and commerce.
  


• Originally, the internet took time from TV: now it is no longer a threat to TV viewing. With broadband, it fills 'gaps' in the day (or in TV viewing), rather than taking dedicated, dial-up time. What will suffer are newspapers and news magazines (as opposed to lifestyle magazines), as news migrates to the net.

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