You’d think a TV station would be worth more then $0, wouldn’t you? Apparently not.
Laurel Papworth posted yesterday about reading in NZ Herald on Sunday “This week the Seven Network confirmed it had cut the value of its 47 per cent holding in the Seven Media Group from A$793.9 million to zero, following Packer’s similar valuation of PBL Media when he dumped his residual holding of his family’s former Nine Network flagship. The Ten network is also struggling, and on Thursday Fairfax halted trading in its shares as it considered raising funds following the announcement of an A$365.2 million net loss for the final six months of 2008.” (Greg Ansley)

Laurel’s piece goes on to quote more traditional media woes from The New York Times, and this quote in a piece titled End Time from The Atlantic:
“Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. Most of these scenarios assume a gradual crossing-over, almost like the migration of dunes, as behaviors change, paradigms shift, and the digital future heaves fully into view. The thinking goes that the existing brands—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—will be the ones making that transition, challenged but still dominant as sources of original reporting.

But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?”

I have been in the comfortingly long wind down camp in relation to the future of industrial media mostly because of the stupid sums of money involved, I could not believe it would just go away. But it just might.
Are we in the transition from platform based media to brand based media?

My favourite example of brand based media is Triple J – it was a radio station, now it is a radio station, TV show, magazine, web-site, live events, vodcasts, podcasts, blog, and yes, they are on Twitter. Triple J is a platform agnostic media brand with a tightly defined niche. This is the future of media.

The idea of the focus being on the medium instead of the media made sense until now. Today though we see the end result of trying to tie your audience to your medium and be as broad as possible – flaccid, lifeless content that means nothing to no-one (there are of course exceptions but I think you’d agree the bulk is garbage). Broadcast, that is trying to get as broad an audience to your platform as possible no longer works.

Ok, so you’re thinking about employing Social Media for your business, what does this mean?

Narrow focus – if you have three distinct buyers for your product/service then you will need three distinct social media approaches. Maybe not all at once, however one size fits all marketing will do you a disservice. If you try to make your marketing mean everything to everyone it will end up meaning nothing to no-one.

The numbers wont be as big – broadcast media style numbers of the last 70 years are history. But that’s ok. An actively engaged audience base that cares about what you add to their day is worth far more than a larger mostly disinterested inactive group. Chandon Craft has a small audience that reads their blog every single day and is an active customer base.

It’s a Media Meritocracy – yes one of my favourite themes, as a business you now have an unprecedented ability to connect with your customer base, not to shove your message down their throat but to really forge a relationship. Your market is not getting what it wants from mainstream broadcast media, this is your opportunity.

I don’t believe that newspapers and TV stations are going to disappear, but I do think they are going to have to evolve, and part of that evolution will be in creating focused channels that roll out across a number of media with the content brand being the star not the channel itself. Channel 10 is dipping its toes in the water with their 24hrHD sport channel – to my mind still too broad. When it’s 24 car racing (for example) on TV being added to by all other media formats then I think they’ll be onto something.

The big creatures didn’t survive the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, it was the small and adaptable that went on to repopulate the earth.

(Image by: Infomofo)

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