Rock Paper Scissors
(Media • )
Poor Rupert Murdoch (figuratively, I mean.)
Just a few years ago, it seemed, he had the world on a string. Acquired the largest social network web site in the United States. Nabbed the nation’s premier business newspaper. Perceived and filled the demand for an official right-wing media headquarters, as Neo-con popularity soared during George W. Bush’s first years.
Funny how the passage of time changes things. Today Rupert’s MySpace.com is a Facebook wanna-be that lost more than $140 million last year. Revenue at Rupert’s News Corp. newspaper division was down 18% for the company’s most recently reported fiscal quarter, and 13% at Rupert’s reconfigured Wall Street Journal despite all the money the company saved through layoffs.
And, whether due to audience contempt over an ultra-conservative movement that built us the foundation for today’s Great Recession or simply the bad effect it had on consumer purchasing power and advertising, operating income at Rupert’s television segment was down 54% in the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to the previous year.
So when Murdoch declares that he’s going to erect a web site pay wall around the Journal and all his other digital news holdings, when he intimates he’ll strike an exclusive deal with Microsoft to allow only that company’s inferior search engine to index his web content, when he suggests he’ll hold NFL playoff games hostage unless you cough up more money in your monthly cable bill – well, now you can understand where he’s coming from.
News Corp. still is making a bundle from its film and cable divisions. But its newspapers and broadcast network are making giant sucking sounds. Murdoch blames it on the recession and a corresponding decline in advertising, but he’s not willing to wait for spending to rebound. No, he’s going to force new consumer spending, recession be damned – online behind a wall, or via pay-TV – in exchange for Glenn Beck and the rest of the wonderful content his papers and broadcast network pumps out.
Yes, there is a recession and average Americans aren’t spending like they used to. Yes, clearly, as a result many businesses have decided not advertising their existence is a darn good strategy for success.
But the recession just coincidentally occurred after a major wave of American broadband Internet penetration – about 228 million users now online, more than 74% of the population, according to Nielsen Online.
Here’s the thing that neither Murdoch nor the other captains of Industrial-Strength Media seem to have yet grasped: the Internet allows users to choose for themselves which “stories” or “pages” or “shows” they “watch” or cast aside. Unlike most of the media past, the audience no longer is captive.
That, in a nutshell, is why newspapers, then broadcast TV and then, probably, cable TV, are destined to die in their present forms.
As I believe I’ve adequately demonstrated here, we don’ need no stinkin’ newspaper to get the news. That goes for business news, too, Mr. M.
And it should go without saying that we don’t need Fox TV “reality” shows or slanty fake news to get stupid. Any broadcast TV crap or cable shopping channel can do the job with equal efficiency. It turns out (as I learned after the NFL allowed Art Model to kidnap the Cleveland Browns and spirit them out of Cleveland), you don’t even need professional football to enjoy a Sunday afternoon.
Truth be told, the media advertising model can work just fine, and likely will do so eventually on the web albeit on a scale that may not satisfy conglomerates – once advertisers learn how to pitch their goods and services without annoying prospective customers.
Meantime, as a wide variety of business segments already have learned, the Internet and the web are great levelers. They have a way of eliminating the need for entire layers of stuff related to distribution, sales middle-men, publishers. The musician also becomes the distributor. The manufacturer also is the retail sales outlet. The reporter is also the publisher. The movie production company has a free YouTube channel.
What I think this means is, ultimately more people than ever before will be employed in what could roughly be called media. But in little handfuls spread across thousands of tiny companies, instead of hundreds of thousands of people being employed by a handful of giant media conglomerates.
Rupert and the rest of the Old Media can become rocks if they so choose. But everyone else will be the river.
I think the results should be pretty entertaining.
→ B.Dunn, Dec 30, 2009, 08 13 am
