The Aural/Oral revolution

I had news in an unexpected manner about my past university in Paris. I don't know to what extend these news are correct but when talking about the fact that when I started (and ended) learning Japanese over there, there was basically no audio or video resources of any kind to work with, inside as well as outside the university. Language lab was like the term Paradise, not to be found on earth. I heard that it hasn't changed. It could be true, and besides, a no money university could indeed be stuck in post Edisson era even today. But students have changed as audio video resources, granted you have access to these, are ubiquitous. I still cannot understand why this matter of fact situation sound impact does make more than a blip on the radar whereas we should still feel the big bang heat it was and still is. Everybody except the language schools maybe take this revolutionary situation as, well, convenient, thank you, whereas it should be perceived as the biggest thing that happened to language learning potential in ages. The environment is poorly exploited except for the lean self-learners plodding in the wealth of legal and illicit audio/video content around. Their interaction with the language, any language, is totally different. It does not make language "easier" to learn but it makes the quest richer. Having been raised on textual stuff, I am lacking and will always lack the highly colloquial natural kind of Japanese you sponge in if you are raised on popular culture content. I don't feel bad about it - after all if I did feel bad, I could just light up the TV and feel better right away. No, in professional settings, in business interpretation, nothing sounds like Crayon Shinchan - maybe during after hours but I am usually no longer around with the clients. What I mean is that accessibility to colloquial, mostly TV based, Japanese renders the language way much more familiar than before. It's not only the popular artifacts of contemporary Japan mostly focused on specific areas of Tokyo that create the cool factor of things Japanese, but the fact that with some efforts, you can quickly catch phrases and a few short joke and feel a part of it, the IT of that part being to a large extend poorly reflecting reality and the banality of daily life. It won't change anytime soon, at least for Japanese. This aural/oral transition is a major evolution in language acquisition that does not make much fuss.