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What's Big Media So Scared Of?
The questions on the minds of Big Media are heavy. What's next? Entire business models -- in place for decades -- are being upended. For most of modern media's history, the rules were straight-forward. Own a platform or delivery device, decide and create the content, then distribute it. The people would watch it, read it, listen to it...on the terms of Big Media.
With multi-media convergience and cross-platform distribution placing more and more control in the hands of consumers for an on-demand world, people get more choices in what, how and when they consume media. Technology gives consumers access to what used to be exclusively controlled by Big Media. Now, people can choose: consume what is delivered by traditional media (live or time-shofted for convenience)...or simply create and distribute what they want to consume.
Many are doing both.
It has all of Big Media scratching their head, trying to figure out what people will watch, listen to and do with these gadget machines now that they are becoming interchangeable and interconnected.
Old-line media companies' fears can be lumped into three Anxiety categories:
* Business-model anxiety. Will paid download services like Apple's iTunes, not to mention TiVo's and their ad-defying fast-forward buttons, undercut TV networks' huge advertising revenue? Can it help revenues in the future? Or is making content available through iTunes only putting a bandage on the mortal wounds? What will the Big Media platforms look like in 10 years? In 5 years?
* Creative anxiety. McLuhan's classic rule "The medium is the message" has been "mashed-up" in today's media world. Anyone who wants to tell a joke, spin a tale or report the latest White House news can produce any combination of video, text, sound and pictures for viewing on a 50-inch TV, a laptop computer or a cellphone screen. No one in conventional media is sure what audiences barraged from all sides actually want. Digital right management and figuring out how to control who owns what is causing a lot of creative agita.
* Control anxiety. Since the invention of the high-speed printing press, mass media have been created for the masses, not by them. It's been all push to the consumer. Now, it's pull. Consumers decide. The rise of Weblogs has given everyone a printing press (tah dah!). Now we can all be DJs, publishers, reporters and film directors, distributing our podcasts and movies online without groveling before a studio executive.
So if the mashup is the message, and control anxiety is keeping big media from profiting from convergence as they hoped, what are the traditional media companies to do?
It would be easy to dismiss them as dinosaurs, but it would also be wrong. The major media companies are not going away.
The solution remains the same. As father of modern management principles Peter Drucker states, "the purpose of business is to create a customer and innovate." Big Media needs to decide who the real customer is and can't try to satisfy everyone. Are current and potential shareholders (and anyone shaping Wall Street perceptions) the real customer? Or is it the public at large, regardless of investor status or potential? Can it be both?
Creating that new customer in these converged times and innovatively satisfying their media need(s) is essential in order for Big Media to find its next growth. Figuring out how to do that is the challenge. Sounds like some therapy sessions might be needed to cure that anxiety.
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posted by Unknown @ Friday, January 27, 2006,
