Emergic: June 5, 2005 Archives

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Old Media's Survival Challenge

WSJ writes:

Newspaper publishers, book publishers, movie studios, music companies, ad agencies, television networks -- they're all trying to figure out how they fit into a new-media world. Their old way of doing business isn't as profitable as it used to be, but they haven't found a new way that's as profitable, either.

So we decided to ask a wide group of media experts for their suggestions. What do they think old-media companies should do to survive? The answers ranged from the general to the specific, from the mundane to the far-out. Here's a look at what's ailing various media industries -- and what our experts suggest to help cure their ills.

One of the ideas:

Let readers customize their own newspaper. "The newspaper of the future is going to be a coalition of niche products," says S.W. "Sammy" Papert III, chairman and CEO of Belden Associates, a Dallas newspaper-industry consultant. That means, for instance, that newspapers should offer online readers -- who are used to hunting for narrowly focused information that interests them -- an opportunity to create a specialized newspaper according to their areas of interest. So, for example, newspapers might allow their readers to click a few buttons and see all of a paper's coverage about local politics, excluding everything else. Or readers might opt for a page devoted to sports or cultural news.

General | PermaLink | Comments (2)

Interesting thought there. Some cool points to consider:
1. Isn't 'mass customization' old hat already? RSS feeds outta most sites now make it possible to syndicate and personalize news. The new, critical element roiling old media is potential and ability to 'Interactivity' offered by new media. The satisfaction of knowing that your opinion/preferences can be reflected in the medium (in however small a degree) is a powerful stimulant, attention-grabber and loyalty evoker.
2. The rise of 'citizen's media' - already a hit in south korea and now being launched in america as well- sure is interesting. This is the first time news agencies will have direct competition in the sourcing of news. So far, their competitionj was limited only to news distribution.
3. The impact of new media on advertising is paramount and that's where old media's feeling the pinch - loss of ad revenue growth. Take blogs for example where even now, through blogads etc, people are still figuring out what the advertising in blogs is effective and what is a total waste.
4. The rise in the no. of access outlets - paper, PC and now mobile- add to content development and transmission costs while simultaneously fragmenting the market.
Put all together and we're in for a bumpy ride in the next few years as the market stabilizes in the post-jurassic era, the dinosaurs perish and small, nimble mammals inherit the earth...

Posted by sudhir

Traditionally, a news company generated or collected news, transmitted it, edited, collated, and otherwise processed it and delivered it to customers (subscribing consumers) via newspaper, or radio, or TV. This was similar to the way electric power, telephone services, and milk production and delivery to homes were handled. Currently, with the electric grids, phone grids (including wireless), and commodity grids, generators and consumers are doing business on a connectionless network. (We do not know which cow's milk went into our coffee this morning.) We can expect a similar model to develop for news marketing. There will evolve some ways of classifying news chunks by news genrators on one end and consumer interests on the other. I expect these classifications to lead to a multi-dimensional protocol, perhaps, developed by a yet to be formed global news consortium.

Posted by Som Karamchetty

Third World and Open-Source

John Carrol writes:

The primary barrier to Linux growth is the cost of moving from a Windows ecosystem to a Linux ecosystem. Developing nations, however, have less existing IT infrastructure. Much as African nations are bypassing wired telecommunications and moving straight to wireless, why can’t developing nations bypass the Windows standard and grow a Linux ecosystem?

First, don’t underestimate the installed IT base present in developing nations. Nations such as Brazil aren’t Zaire. Per capita GDP in Brazil is six times that of China, and over half of the Czech Republic. The IT base in most nations isn’t exactly a tabula rasa, and any large organization will have already built up credible amounts of IT infrastructure.

Second, consider why English is the de facto language of business. Given the need to communicate in business situations, people naturally gravitate towards one language, and for historical reasons, that language is English. It doesn’t matter whether an economy newly integrated into the global marketplace has less of a track record of using English. They will use English in business situations, because that’s what the wider business world is using.

The same principle applies in computer technology. Asians outnumber Westerners by a factor of 4 to 1. Still, the West will remain a critical market for the forseeable future, and having systems that integrate seamlessly with, and can consume products created by, Western corporations will continue to be important. That means Asian IT infrastructure is likely to mirror Western IT infrastructure.

The open source community can’t look to the developing world as the tugboat that drags the developed world into the Linux port. They will need to figure out a way to convince the developed world to adopt Linux. In my entirely fallible opinion, the only way to do that is to lower the cost of shifting to Linux, and that’s going to depend on making it easy for Windows developers to move into open source. If the open source community doesn’t want to do that, then Windows developers aren’t going to move, and that means the people who use their products will stay put, too.

Software | PermaLink | Comments (2)

Much as I love open source and Linux in particular, I have to agree with you. Both in regards to the flawed thinking that the developing countries could, by establishing a Linux standard, force the West to "come into compliance", and also in regards to encouraging Windows developers to migrate to open source.

In addition to the cost of replacing existing infrastructure, there's a real cost in retraining talent and for small businesses in identifying and securing talent capable of deploying and maintaining Linux based environments.

Say what you will, Windows is still simpler for the average small business to deploy than Linux; further, without the same established accreditation base and certification standards that make a particular level of expertise readily identified by a non-tech-savvy business owner (such as a Microsoft MCSE, for example) people won't feel confident hiring out for support and lack the core competencies to deploy and secure a full blown Linux environment.

I wish I didn't feel this way. I love the power, the stability, the efficiency and the scalability of Linux, but I still deploy Windows for my company. Why? Even though I am perfectly comfortable to deploy and maintain an end to end Windows environment, I don't feel like retraining an entire office on the software, nor do I feel the issues I'd have with legacy software packages that don't have analogous products in Linux is worth the savings in the near term.

That said, I feel differently about mobile architecture; with product life cycles so much shorter and the rapidly maturing and very user friendly Symbian and UIQ environments, I think in this arena, the products, tools and applications make perfect sense.

Oliver Starr, CTO
QM Group

Posted by "stitch" Oliver Starr

Not sure if the author's perception of what drives adoption is correct. What the mini's did to the mainframes, the pc's did to minis. Bring down the cost of computing so that more tasks could be automated or atleast stored and retrieved from a secondary memory device. Retraining staff is a problem only when the value proposition is not tantalizing. The day when linux (or simiar FLOSS ware) can present this level of value will be the day when the ROI and retraining wars will stop. IAC, from the perspective of a startup with a fresh IT infrastructure (irrespective of if it is in the developed or developing world) the value proposition of F/LOSS is already very good. I should know, i have put my money where my mouth is :)

Posted by Shiv