BuyMeGetMe.com

Interesting story on the front page of Monday’s Financial Times. It tells of a 15-year old intern working in Morgan Stanley’s London office who was asked to describe his friends’ media habits.

What Matthew Robson wrote is now the hot topic with fund managers around the world. It also serves as a warning for “old media” industries and their customers.

The story quotes the lad as saying that teens don’t use Twitter. That’s because Tweets can be accomplished on cell phones but that uses valuable cellular data plan minutes. Teens also don’t like the fact no one looks at their Twitter profiles. Robson concludes that Tweets are “pointless”.

The lad is also down on watching television or listening to over-the-air radio. He believes Internet radio and TV/videos are the way to go.

Newspapers are at the bottom of his list because teenagers “can’t be bothered to read pages and pages of text rather than reading or watching a summary” (probably on their cell phones rather than sitting in front of the “telly”).

The memo concludes that teens prefer spending their time and money on movies, concerts and video game consoles (which allow them to not only play games and watch videos but also facilitate chatting with friends).

This memo brings-up a number of interesting points:

Robson basically told the world that our current crop of teens and young adults are unwilling (or unable) to digest anything but small amounts of information at any given time. I’m not sure this bodes well for the next generation of leaders and thinkers. Garbage in – garbage out.

Odds are teens don’t worry about who pays for home Internet access. If they did, and had to ration its use like they do with cellular data minutes, they might think differently about their ubiquitous, free Web access in their parents’ home.

Robson also says that teens find advertising “extremely annoying and pointless.” I would think that, if that’s the case, watching the BBC (or PBS here) would be very appealing to teens. What it really says is that kids reject being sold to by older generations. That sounds a lot like what teens complained about in the 1960’s, 70’s, etc.

Finally, and we’re already seeing the effects, broadcast TV, radio and newspapers are suffering. Just look at the lengths some television stations are going to (watch the local news on New York’s Channel 4 – if you can) to appeal to generations of viewers who don’t care to watch. Forget about the older generations (with lots of disposable income) who do. We are being ignored.

The current King of “Older” Media, 78-year old Rupert Murdoch has a growing problem. Not only in Great Britain and the U.S. but everywhere. His worldwide newspaper, radio and TV holdings won’t be reaching younger generations – and that doesn’t look promising for many businesses.