Economic Analysis of the Media Industry

Been meaning to share this for a few months now, it’s a paper I wrote on the state of the media industry through the recession with projections for the future.  Kinda dense, but interesting if you’re into that sort of thing.

The “great recession” has caused a seismic downturn in the U.S. economy over the past three years.  Many firms have shut down or exited the market, unemployment reached a staggering high of 10%, and companies in industries such as real estate and finance will have to possibly alter their entire business model to remain competitive.  Yet, there is an industry that has been globally altered and seems to remain off the radar of the collective conscience, the media industry.  Between the current recession and the widespread adoption of digital technology, the media industry has been reshaped for the 21st century.

Mediums such as radio, television, film and print have all been forced to quickly adapt to a new digital marketplace or to lose their market share.  Consumers have made it clear that they want to receive their news and entertainment in a highly accessible form, whether it is a mobile app on their phone or online through websites such as iTunes (music), Pandora (radio) and Hulu (television).  Advertisers have felt the brunt of this shift, as traditional advertising models are less effective in the digital age.  With the advent of DVR’s, consumers no longer are forced to watch commercials during their television programs.  Netflix and online movie sites have put a dent into brick and mortar stores such as Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.  Prices at the movies have gone up and 3D and IMAX have become more marketable to give viewers enough of an experience to make it worth the trip to the theater.

Media executives have been under increased pressure to quickly come up with new business models that can adapt to the shift in technological innovation, while creating valuable content to a consumer.  With the popularity of websites such as YouTube, anybody can now distribute their content online to a widespread audience at little to no cost.  The days of having to move to New York or Los Angeles to enter a career in entertainment are over in the 21^st century.  Now a teenager with a camera phone could make the next great viral YouTube video that could land them anything from a record deal to a film role.  The process of creating content, distributing the content via online platforms, and finding an audience to consume the content has become globally accessible to anyone on any type of budget.   Artists, journalists, and actors do not have to rely solely on the infrastructure created by big studios and corporate conglomerates.   Whether its podcasting, reality TV, or blogging local news stories, the everyday person now both creates and consumes the content they produce.

To understand how firms can remain profitable, it is important to look at the business model that they have relied upon up to this point. Barrett Garese, a business development consultant and former talent agent, discusses the scarcity model that Hollywood has used for the past 50+ years in a recent blog post. If you wanted to see a movie prior to the late 90s you had very limited options to choose form. You had to either go to the theater at the date/time it was playing, wait a specified period of time for a physical object to be released to retail (i.e. VHS, Betamax, DVD), or wait for it to come on television to a specified channel at a specified time.  In the 2000s, the global accessibility to high speed internet and cable TV forced distributors to narrow the release gaps, and made it easier for consumers to pirate media taking away the opportunity for firms and artists to profit on their own work.

Firms still do maintain an advantage in being able to fund mainstream projects over independent producers working on a shoestring budget.  As Garese (2009) states in his article, “…distribution still requires content, and content – at least as we understand current “mainstream” models of content – still requires funding.  There’s still a checkmark in the win column for the traditional entertainment companies in this regard, as they’re the entities currently spending a lot of money on mass entertainment. No one else is financing content like media companies, and no one else in the world has the expertise to do so either.”

eNow Founder Edo Segal contributed an article to TechCrunch that also deals with media scarcity, “Media scarcity is dead” he states (Segal 2009).  “In the future my son will have a flash drive that he will pay $29 for that will have the capacity to hold all movies and music ever released by a major label, studio or TV/cable network.”  With highly accessible forms of technology making it easier to consume media than ever before, the idea of media convergence is brought up to help firms create profit.  Segal mentions how Steve Jobs and Apple have been innovators in converging platforms with its iPhone and iPad mobile devices and app’s.  According to Segal (2009), “Apple has created a media consumption experience where soon the consumer will not know if he is buying music, a movie or a game.  The notion of App is changing.  The lines between these different forms of media are quickly blurring and soon will be completely artificial. Already these distinctions are merely fossilized conventions that stem from consumers’ discovery habits.  As those evolve, like learning that it is easier to go to Amazon and search to find a product than going to aisle 9 at the store.  The coming confusion  of the consumption experience where a user won’t care or know if what they are buying is a movie, a game or a music track presents vast opportunity.

One of the ways that media firms have tried to combat pirating and stay relevant is to create app’s that are not easy to duplicate, yet offer the user a satisfying overall experience.  An example of this is the Toy Story 3 app recently released in advance of the film.  The app includes info on the story and characters, a playable game, advertisements, and paid premium content.  News outlets like the New York Times have been early adopters to mobile app development offering their stories the same day that they appear in print and online.  The NY Times app has consistently placed in the top 10 of Apple’s top news downloads and there was recently an upgraded version to be read on the iPad which feels akin to holding a real newspaper.  If media corporations cannot find ways to maximize their digital revenue streams in addition to traditional outlets, they will not be able to succeed in the new marketplace.

 The downfall of the scarcity business model came at a poor time as it was a part of a series of events which would prove to be disruptive for the industry.  In 2006, the U.S. began to see widespread adoption of digital technology such as mobile devices, high speed internet, even more affordable computers and social networking.  CD sales were already falling since 2001, and magazine and newspaper subscriptions had been trending down for many consecutive quarters.  The U.S. entered the beginning of a major recession in late 2007, and consumers began to spend less money with worry for job security, real estate and a plunging stock market.  With less spending, advertisers began to buy less space in mediums such as radio, television, and print.  As these mediums were losing revenue from advertisers as well as losing revenue to digital forms of distribution (legal and illegal), they were forced to lay off employees, consolidate departments, and reduce costs. 

The slowdown in advertising began in earnest during the final quarter of 2007, when ad spending grew an anemic 0.7 percent – its slowest pace in five years, according to Bernstein Research (Goode, 2010).  This decline in advertising dollars was crippling to the newspaper industry as it had already been dealing with competition from online news sources, dwindling subscriber numbers and low ad rates.  The New York Times and the Washington Post toyed with the idea to create a “pay wall” where consumers would have to subscribe for a monthly fee to access articles online.  The Post soon realized that this strategy would not meet their needs as users could find information elsewhere too readily, especially with classifieds where sites like Craig’s List and Monster.com were biting into their market share.  On the other hand a “pay wall” has been successful for a major business paper, The Wall Street Journal.  News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch has said that offering a few free articles daily or the first paragraph or two for free and then asking for a subscription code has been a profitable formula for the Wall Street Journal.  It’s important to keep in mind that readers of the paper are generally more upscale and willing to pay for that information where as a casual reader may not.  This goes in hand with one of the ten principles of economics which is to create an incentive.  With special content and a taste of the article to hook the reader, the Journal found that its target demographic was indeed signing up for the service and finding value in paying for the WSJ content online which made the effort worthwhile.

Like my Fan Page on Facebook

The above is a statement you’ll be hearing from now on as Facebook has subtly done away with its “become  a fan” button on fan pages, switching to a more familiar “like” button.  While from the surface this doesn’t seem like an earth shattering change, it’s got some deeper ramifications that the average Facebook user may not consider.

The main reason for this change to occur at all is to cater to businesses who will be spending big bucks on Facebook Ad’s.  The problem with social media has always been monetizing the platform to produce billions that traditional media generates.  Ad’s are the easiest and most common way to do this, and Facebook and Twitter have both recently stepped up their ad game.  Facebook knows its sitting on a goldmine with their fan pages as thousands of users are being connected to their favorite brand’s and interacting with companies for anything from customer service to special prize giveaways.  Facebook obviously wants a piece of the action, and to get the most users to sign up for these fan pages they have resorted to a bit of trickery. 

The “Become A Fan” button was very clear that by clicking it you were giving your allegiance to whatever the page was about.  But with the “like” button it’s a bit more non-commital, we are already used to “liking” our friends statuses, events, and pictures.  Why not “like” Proctor & Gamble’s new laundry detergent, or “like” the fact that your local car dealer is offering 0% financing.  It doesn’t carry the same weight as calling yourself a fan of something, yet the brand still gets your support as one of its fans.  It becomes a win/win for the brand and facebook, while possibly confusing the consumer.  Not the best way to conduct business, but sure to succeed.

With Twitter implementing its own ad system, it seems that subtly fooling users into clicking ads is becoming commonplace in social media.  Twitter will now have one sponsored ad appear  at the top of their search results, and they will be able to track how effective the ad is by the amount of clicks that it gets.  If an ad is not getting very many clicks it will stop appearing in your search results to be replaced with something that might be more appealing to you.  Facebook is going to try something similar by using your browsing history to create targeted ads.  Google has become well versed in this process, next time you log into gmail look to the right sidebar and you’ll see plenty of ads for things that you had been searching for.

Apple putting interactive ads into iPhone and iPad app’s will be a whole new evolution of this and could inject a shot of energy into a struggling advertising market.  This new way of doing ad business is popular for only one reason, it works.  People tend to click these ads thinking theyre clicking content on the website.  The ethical dilemma raised by this seems to be overlooked for now but its quite clear these social media sites are becoming a major privacy concern, hopefully it can be controlled before we’re too far down the rabbit hole.

Is the Desktop obsolete?

The tech community has been on fire from the recent comments made by Google’s European Director of Online Sales, John Herlihy.  “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs,” he said.

Now you may thinking to yourself that 3 years sounds pretty soon for something like this to occur, but let’s not forget in our extremely fast paced world of digital media and technology, 3 years is almost a decade.   For example, just 3 years ago there was no Twitter.   But now just yesterday we saw our 10 billionth tweet and every ma and pop store across the country is looking for ways to get on board with social media.  Things will change at an even more rapid pace and 3 years in the future, we’ll be looking at a completely new tech landscape as the iPad will be 3 years old, Facebook will almost turn 10, and the internet will be almost old enough to buy its first alcoholic beverage.

With that we can expect tablet and mobile computing to grow at an exponential rate.  Need to find directions, recipes, check messages, or just relax with a nice crossword puzzle?  There’s an app for that.  The purpose of a large space hogging desktop computer and being confined to a room in your house is just not efficient for the common PC user.  Companies having to cater to that dwindling demographic would be an even larger misstep.  Will desktop PC’s be gone from everyday use completely?  Of course not.  There’s still plenty of use for them in many industries.

But when you want to get plugged into the web after a long day, doesn’t it just make sense to have a web browser and app’s built into your TV?  Well thats the way its going.  Try to find a new LCD or LED television these days that doesn’t include netflix, amazon, facebook, or pandora.  Even the newly announced Series 4 Tivo DVR’s will have online browsing and mobile phone capabilities.  Great app’s and browser functionality on your dvr, game system, and television,  who needs a desktop?  In 3 years will it be far fetched to see 1 TB+ storage to come with your tv’s or even dvd player?  The average person will have their storage needs met by a variety of sources and having a large desktop just won’t cut the mark.

I don’t have statistics on PC gaming but I can’t imagine it’s doing more business than the PS3 and Xbox.. take a look at your local best buy and the PC gaming area is dwindling down.  With faster processors and more storage in desktop replacement laptop’s, the idea of having a ”supercomputer” to play your games is quickly turning into a thing of the past.

Only time will tell what the future of the desktop will be, but from a consumer standpoint you can take one quick look at sony, dell, or apple’s website and the first thing you’ll see is advertising for new laptop and mobile products.  The wave of the future is in portability and businesses are also quickly climbing on board.

Microsoft Announces Windows Phone 7

As expected, Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 during its press conference at Mobile World Congress 2010 on Monday. The event is actually happening right now as this story posts, but we got a pre-briefing of today’s news and wanted to share a quick list of major points with you.

•Microsoft will have four major announcements at MWC:

•The introduction of the Windows Phone 7 series. The series refers to a set of phones that will run on the new OS, and not a various editions of the OS. From here on out, the Windows Mobile name is considered dead.

•Xbox Live and Zune will be integrated into Windows 7 phones. Zune will also go international, and the Zune PC client will be used for syncing your phone to your PC. No more ActiveSync.

•Partnership announcements. Carrier partners include AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Sprint, Verizon, Deutsch Telecom, Orange, Telecom Italia, SFR, Telefonica, Telstra, and Vodafone. OEM partners include Dell, HTC, Garmin-Asus, HP, LG, Samsung , Sony Ericsson, Toshiba. Qualcomm will provide the chips.

•Timeframe: Windows 7 phones will be in stores by the holiday season.

•Windows Phone 7 came together in about 12 months, though a hard reset of the OS started about two years ago. When creating Windows Phone 7, the team focused on visual design and creating a more integrated experience for the user. Interestingly, OEM partners will be able to customize the user experience but won’t be able to replace it. In other words, you won’t be seeing the likes of HTC Sense on future Windows phones. Microsoft wants the same user experience on all its phones.

•The design team created Windows Phone 7 on a number principles, including user typography, elegance and simplicity, authentically digital, motion, and developing a mobile OS that’s clean, light, open and fast.

•Windows Phone 7 has a chromeless UI, meaning that you no longer have borders or a Start button. Microsoft stripped everything it believed the user didn’t need and only present the content you want.

•The OS looks completely different from Windows Mobile but will probably look familiar to Zune HD user interface. The Start page now features dynamic tiles that are constantly updated and can be rearranged to your liking.

•By swiping or panning to the right of the Start page, you get a list of all your apps.

•Microsoft is not talking about multi-tasking today, though it did say the phones will have the ability to play music in the background while you’re working in other apps.

•The company is also not officially commenting on Flash support, though Adobe announced on Sunday that it is working closely with Microsoft to bring Flash to future Windows phones. However, it most likely won’t be ready by the time the phones ship during the holiday season.

Whats the buzz about Google?

It’s been a few days since the release of Google’s new foray into the social media realm, aptly titled Google Buzz.  Google is attempting to steal some market share away from Twitter and Facebook by fully integrating a social media platform into Gmail.  If you’ve already got a google account and are on gmail, you’re ready to buzz.  Cutting out the process of registering your site or waiting for an exclusive beta invite will help it avoid the pitfalls that many of these app’s have incurred (ahem google wave).  Also your contacts on Buzz will immediately be added to your followers list, doing away with the tedious process of adding your social circle to your list.  All of these things are great at making Buzz automatically feel a part of your daily browsing routine and simplifying any decision making required.

But beyond the hype and glitz how does Buzz stack up against the competition?  Well for starters most people are only using their other sites linked into Buzz to create content.  So when you log onto your Buzz page you’ll be seeing your friends’ Twitter statuses that you could already see elsewhere.  Google has high hopes that people will begin to share media and pictures on Buzz, but with people who have enough of their social media plate already full it’s not looking very likely in the near future.  A major annoyance of Buzz is the fact that anybody can openly comment on a status making it take up a lot of real estate on your screen.  This is fine if using between a few friends commenting on a story, but follow somebody like Kevin Rose or Mashable and your Buzz feed will quickly become cluttered.

There’s been a lot of complaints about privacy as well.  Anybody can view your google profile if you’re on Buzz meaning that your well guarded email address becomes publically visible to anyone else on Buzz.  Also Google’s connectivity to Picasa was creating issues where anyone could publically view your photo albums as well.  Google has been quick to address these complaints and work out the bugs, but Facebook knows all too well how badly your brand can be damaged when a reputation of privacy issues starts to spread.  Like most other social media platforms, only time can tell if this will be a successful venture for Google.  But coming off the heels of a cold reception to google wave and public failures in advertising and media industries, Google certainly has its work cut out for it with Buzz.

Comcast/NBC deal has huge Hulu implications

It’s taken several months, but it looks like the deal is done: Comcast is buying NBC Universal from GE. Well, at least 51% of it.

While the deal still has to pass regulatory hurdles, it seems likely that The Tonight Show and The Office are going to be part of Comcast’s vast cable operation and its own array of TV programming that includes E! Entertainment, G4, and multiple sports channels.

Comcast is also getting something else out of the deal: Hulu, one of the hottest web properties around and something that Comcast is looking to kill. The fallout of this deal could affect the future direction of online video.

First, let’s be clear: nobody knows what involvement Comcast will have with Hulu. NBC Universal owns 30% of Hulu and Comcast will own only 51% of NBC Universal. In addition, NBC Universal will be a spinoff, meaning that it will operate in many ways like an independent company.

You can bet though that Comcast will have major influence behind NBC’s decisions, including the decisions behind how Hulu is monetized. Comcast has already declared that it prefers a subscription model with its TV Everywhere service, announced in June of this year. TV Everywhere lets Comcast and Time Warner subscribers access certain TV channels and shows online, including TBS and TNT (owned by Time Warner).

This could exactly be in line with Hulu’s future direction. We know that Hulu may start charging for content in 2010, according to an executive from News Corp. Comcast could push it further in that direction.

We think it’s very possible that a two-tiered system of free and paid content will eventually constitute Hulu. The cable giant isn’t going to try to kill Hulu, nor will it have the ability to do so. It realizes that online video is growing, not shrinking, and that it must find ways to adapt. Having Hulu in its arsenal is an asset for the company.

Let us alleviate some of your fears: Comcast won’t force NBC to pull out of Hulu, won’t be removing content from it (more likely, it’ll add content), and won’t make the entire thing a pay service. However, expect Hulu to evolve and expect it to include subscription services, but don’t expect a lot of interference from Comcast.

Why Twitter > Facebook

I’m starting to get that feeling in my gut, the same one that I had in late 2007 when I knew that MySpace had crossed the line of no return in its war against Facebook.   But this time, it’s Facebook’s turn to be bested.  It’s not because of the multiple site revamps where with each one the design of Facebook seems to get worse and more confusing, it’s not just because Twitter seems to be all the rage right now (sites can lose that momentum, here’s looking at you Friendster), and it’s not because of Facebook users unhealthy obsession with Farmville. 

The reason why I think Twitter is about to truly blow its competition out of the water is because Twitter does one thing better than any other site on the internet: reinvents how we communicate.  While many just use their tweets to convey news and priority information, the new trend with Twitter seems to be friendly conversation with strangers, much akin to the old days of forums and message boards and dare I even say chat rooms.   Twitter has become an easy way for you to reach out to a complete stranger, and it seems like these days it’s more and more likely you’ll get a reply.  Most of the conversation on Twitter is always in a polite and friendly tone, you just don’t get the flame wars and trolls that the much despised chat room can bring.  Twitter encapsulates the most basic form of human contact and communication, and reinvents it into something a bit more intuititve for the digital age.

Whether you’re talking to a celebrity, friend, or somebody you have never met, Twitter has created a new way for us to share ideas, news, information, jokes, and just about anything else thats on our minds.  Facebook meanwhile in contrast feels very sterile, cold, and isolating.  On FB, there’s a litany of privacy settings for each profile blocking any meaningful conversation with someone you’ve never met before.   Let’s face it.. don’t you just feel a tad bit creepy sending someone an unsolicited message or friend request on Facebook even if you’re interested in getting to know more about them? 

But on Twitter, unsolicited messages are not only welcome but quickly becoming anticipated and expected.  We feel a sense of pride when someone chooses to follow us, retweet us, or reply to something we’ve said.  Twitter has opened the flood gate for an actual conversation to take place on the internet, theres no fees, theres no bad music/flashing layouts, and most importantly of all there’s not a feeling of bothering someone or being put off when we reach out to them.  This community is also still growing day by day, I feel that we haven’t seen 1/4th of the potential that Twitter can bring. 

I see Twitter as almost the next evolution of e-mail.  You can reach out to anybody that has an account, they still have the choice to reply to what you send, and 140 characters is just right for breaking the ice or getting a quick point across.  Tweets are a faster, quicker, and shorter way of contacting someone and when enough people get on your social network will really start booming, giving you far more “friends” and contacts than myspace/facebook could combined. 

One of the tell tale signs of a site really hitting its mainstream stride, is when your friends who are anti-social media or technology start to sign up for it.  Slowly but surely I’m seeing everyone from the “jocks” to the “geeks” getting on to Twitter, and surprisingly enough.. they’re communicating with each other.  I think Twitter has done an amazing job of bringing down this impetus shield of contact that we put up as human beings.  We’re all social creatures at heart and out of all of the platforms out there, it seems like Twitter gives us the most ability for our voices to be heard.

Pizza Hut’s iPhone App Has 1 Million Sales

Pizza Hut is probably not the most tech saavy company you can think of, but they’ve found out the raw power of the iPhone app as they have just reached 1 million sales.  As a pizza lover and general fat ass, the idea of ordering a pizza off my iphone is pretty ingenius.  It’s faster and more streamlined than going online, and in 2009 why would anyone want to actually place a phone call?  The app is pretty easy to use and has a few extra bells and whistles like mini-games and intuitive controls.  Pizza Hut’s developers have also done a great job of keeping the app in line with marketing/branding.  Try it out on your phone and let me know what you think, will it be the new way you order pizza?  Some extra incentive is a 20% discount for app users.

 

More and more companies are creating iPhone applications as a way to reinforce branding and to gain new customers. Some companies are even seeing increased sales thanks to iPhone apps. One of those is the Pizza Hut app for the iPhone and iPod touch, which has now generated more than $1 million in sales according to MobileMarketer. The US-only iPhone app was first introduced three months ago.

Although Pizza Hut had a WAP enabled mobile site before launching the iPhone app, the iPhone app has far exceeded expectations. Bernard Acoca, senior director of digital marketing for Pizza Hut told MobileMarketer: “We always saw a steady level of growth with our mobile business via our WAP site, but to be candid it wasn’t the explosive level of growth we’ve seen with the iPhone app. IPhone applications capture consumers’ imagination in a way that WAP sites simply can’t do, so the decision to expand to the iPhone was as good one for us.” Pizza Hut’s mobile app has been featured in iPhone ads for Apple and has consistently ranked highly in the Lifestyle section in the App Store. It probably doesn’t hurt that customers get 20% off on orders made using the app.

Pizza Hut isn’t the only pizza chain aggressively targeting mobile devices. Rival Dominos has a very nice iPhone optimized website (though no stand-alone app) as well as a mobile-implementation of its downright addictive real-time order status updater.

Do you order pizza (or other food) from a mobile app? What do you think about mobile applications fueling sales? Let us know!

Last.fm Produces Music Television Programming

This one is an absolute GAME CHANGER, love what the folks over at Last.fm have been doing, they are quickly becoming the new face of consumer driven music.  First they signed a deal with Microsoft to get Last.fm onto Xbox Live, it will launch at the same time that Twitter/Facebook launch for Xbox Live which is a brilliant play into A) getting immediate credibility associated with two powerhouse social media brands and B) getting a major userbase basically overnight, as the 18-34 year old Xbox addicts are prime demo for Last.fm.

Now they’re going to take over the one thing we’ve all demanded from MTV for years, Music Video: 

Earlier this month, Last.fm launched its own HD radio stations in four different cities. Now, the CBS-owned company’s plan to expand beyond online music programming includes video too.

According to Music Week, the company will launch Last.TV to online and offline airwaves starting in January and will initially include content from music festivals in Europe, “either through building bespoke events or partnering with existing festivals.”

Of course, it seems like music-oriented programming is a logical next step given the network affiliation, and we certainly think that there’s more room for music-oriented television — especially with MTV focusing on reality-show content. Last.fm is certainly poised to pull in big acts and appeal to younger audiences already using the online service, but it will be interesting to see how this actually comes together.

With corporate big wig CBS funding Last.fm, there’s no doubt this company is on the verge of breaking huge and reinventing the way we consume music online and maybe even in cars in the future.  Game changer.

 

Google to Introduce “Social Search”

Not sure how I feel about this new function coming from Google.  We’ll soon be able to see search results called “social search”, which will give you status updates, flickr feeds, and facebook profiles for the things that you search for.  Do you really want your Tweet’s appearing on this?  Making it even easier to find you.  I can certainly see negative implications regarding employment background checks and the like.  Another reason why in this day and age, if you don’t want something to be traced back to you online, don’t post it anywhere!!

Here’s the story from Mashable:

Google’s Vice-President of Search Marissa Mayer has just made a surprise announcement at the Web 2.0 Expo: a new Google Labs feature called Social Search. They just gave a quick demo of the new feature. While the details are still sparse, here is what we currently know (and we’re still updating, so check back for more information): – The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr() photos or their status updates.

It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results. – These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results. – They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data. – It will launch in Google Labs in the next few weeks.