The (industrial) (r)Evolution of Media

The Search Business Offers an Important Lesson For American Media Companies

This blog is about a very large & important trend involving a key part of the American infrastructure. As a nation we are presently doing to media what we did to establish the US as an industrial force more than a hundred years ago. Many naturally occurring circumstances surrounding the first industrial revolution helped the US to a quick competitive edge. This time, however, many of the key mitigating factors (think technology) are matched around the world so American's main advantage will be our very freedom, creative flexibility, and development speed attached to these defining alterations.

In the US during the 20th century broadcast media was a great business and the rules that confined and defined these markets allowed it to develop both deeply and broadly. Now, the digital era has changed so much in a very short time and the pace of this change is increasing.

My perspective (because of my age) is naturally divided between pre-digital media and AS (after Search arrived). To some extent, we are all products of our experiences. For instance if you learned how to use Yahoo and Google as an adult then these powerful tools are an adjunct to the universe of media in your head. If however, you are younger and have come of age in the past 13 years (when search entered the mainstream) then search is more than a thick phone book option for when you do not have a first choice; the process is more thoroughly integrated into a pattern of behavior. Different generations think about (organize) media differently and that is evident in how search is utilized. 

Yesterday's NYT offers a brief discussion of how the Search business is now splintering its efforts to distinguish real time search from query oriented search. When you think about it, this is the equivalent of a wizard bottling the magic power of TV or radio's immediacy into a universal potion for access to the collective consciousness without regard to geography. wow! If you are a user, it is a great development. If you are an established media company, your challenges just got more complex.

Building The Era of Choice (a smaller increment of media's most important trend- Net Neutrality)

Net Neutrality. It sounds technical if you've not taken the time to understand the issue. If you have, it is relatively simple.  So, what really matters?  Choice.

Apart and above all the doings of this smaller increment is the larger trend. The Era of Choice. This is an era when humans, guided by technology have reversed the dynamics associated with commercial channels of communication to such an extent that entire industries are seeing forced change across America (and worldwide societies)to adapt to people's new behaviors and expectations.

For analytical purposes I use the idea that societies function according to social mood and that this slow moving "root of all social trends" shapes our creative endeavors, especially business and industry.It is only one dynamic in the big picture but it is exceedingly important.

Just before launching this discussion as its own blog (more than a year ago) I looked closely at social media tools and offered my perspective on what they were telling us about where we are taking media in general. My conclusions were simple and straight forward.(look at the links in top right column of this blog) They are worth revisiting now. First, social media tools scream out for Choice and while this social trend can be seen from many angles, social media tools demonstrate most clearly that two way communication in channels for content is being directed by the social impulse toward Choice. Second, how each generation grew into adulthood with some or all of this technology in their lives shaped their experiences and attitudes and therefore, the generational divide offers a critical perspective on the psycho-graphics of media consumption, marketing endeavors, and the developing social protocol of the digital universe. In a nutshell how you engage Boomers and Millennials requires two differing standards but the long view on a number of core issues must be shaped by those immersed in technology and not those who saw it develop in their lifetime. Third, social media is a blazing indication of the specialization to come, and it has barely begun. As this dramatic process fans out throughout our creative endeavors in America, the tide of social mood will shape this process very broadly.

Each of these three social dynamics must be seen separately and together and only then can you appreciate where the social tool, guaranteed in the first amendment to the US Constitution, will be taken by a free and creative people. Media is a higher order social tool that we use to create other things everywhere. And despite how the editorials in respected papers are calling for ivory towers of journalism to be rebuilt, I submit that this tool will be managed properly by the People and for the People. In the years ahead the government bureaucracy will endeavor to build large awe inspiring structures that seek to better control outcomes. In the meantime, people will take the critical functions produced by media organizations and break them up into smaller pieces, specialize them, and produce an altogether new social infrastructure. (It is going to happen whether I say so or not.)  And if you are one of those already suspicious of the free market (aka the American people) I suggest you spend your angst elsewhere while the people get together to do the heavy lifting of building of a better media infrastructure, one that is primarily social, with the profits/payoff always out on the horizon of group endeavor, and not next quarter (as was promised by big media companies if only they were allowed to get bigger). (If you are sensing a theme in the previous era you're not alone or wrong.)   

So, net neutrality is about the market's access to information and it is critical that it reflect consumer Choice and not the channel provider's choice. This conflict of interest is telling us that further specialization in the market for  digital access providers is needed, and in time, it will happen. What really matters most is that we let the American people design the solutions and keep special interests relegated to the tools in the tool shed. If we do that, America has very bright prospects as we navigate this unusual period of social correction. If we do not do that then the market for content will struggle for freedom until we do, because it is what really matters right now. There is no better stimulus than a free people doing what needs to be done. Better media (on many levels) makes people better at what they do. That is exactly what we need most right now. Any new rules must protect the consumer's ability to get their Choice.

Net neutrality is essential. Click on keep reading and you'll see a letter a friend sent to his Congressional representative voting against it in Congress. No matter what your opinion is or how it was shaped, Speak up! Social corrections end when we create our way out of them; you do not spend your way out unless the money goes to things that are creatively productive. Limiting creativity for the sake of profitability is socially and politically foolish if you are looking beyond the next election cycle. 

What Single Social Trend Matters Most to Media Enterprises (& Marketers) Today?

In order to see where we (American society) are taking media (a tool with great social utility), we must first see three dynamics separately and then together. Doing this will allow insight on how and why the media business model, as we know it, must fracture and specialize along specific pathways. The first of these three dynamics is, by far, the most important: 

My primary email account gets a grand total of only five scheduled daily deliveries that I signed up for using that address intentionally. Maybe, there is another five that are weekly emails, too. There's also probably a handful of occasional retail entries but they are on a short leash. Otherwise it all goes to Gmail which acts as a clearing house.  That is how I choose to manage the email tool. 

The current recession has been devastating to many media companies that rely upon advertising revenue. The causality attached to this change, as I read about it most days, has to do with a cyclical decline that is viewed by many as unprecedented and includes new competition from web based competitors. Of course, there are plenty of far sighted pros who see the long term term changes continuing to unfold in that direction but to label it new competition from the internet is too simplistic. Consultants and gurus directing the world of media enterprises all preach very specific solutions that involve incorporating social tools as a means to a better end. The more sophisticated among them see clearly how social tools are no answer or end but, a means to the kind of overall cultural change that is needed.(more effective communication on multiple levels at the same time)

Back two+ years ago when this thread about media was developing and broken off from my other (broader) blog,I did so because of one basic and very broad insight. Choice. We are living in the Era of Choice where technology has enabled Choice on many more levels of our individual lives.   And since businesses are tools designed by people, for people, these perceived evolving needs necessarily lag the changes. The more you think about that last thought the more painfully obvious it seems and yet, we see some of the most "plugged in" companies struggling today with the very idea of Choice. The universe of media enterprises is where this revolution will unfold most notably. (It has yet to)

Google suggests micropayments solution for on-line media consumption

Google's announcement of a proposed system for micro payments towards content on line is an important step for what I call the (industrial) (r)Evolution of Media..on a few levels.

If a social trend is important it most certainly can be viewed from a variety of angles and distances.

So this announcement by Google may well be viewed by a tradesman (near layoff) at the NYT as way too little, way too late but, I suggest it is huge....maybe bigger than that when looked at from the right perspective.

The US (and the world to some extent) are dealing with the inevitable aftermath of a century of managed markets that changed or funneled demand for content. The 20th century produced a market for media content in the US that was the creature of government barrier to entry (and capital costs in the case of newspapers) and as such, the limited nature of supply distorted values in a variety of ways to both producers and consumers. Eventually in such a system you lose your perspective much like animals in the zoo lose much of their wildness. It is inevitable.  The present bewilderment in the media industry is really just a long slow opportunity for us all to catch our collective breath before all media consumption becomes a perfectly personalized experience that is woven into our daily social and work experience. Right now, supply of potential sources of content has increased exponentially.  Micro payments will help level a diverse playing field but until everyone acknowledges there is no going back, then we can begin to move forward with incremental innovation that will be meaningful. Right now, what stands out a lot to me is how so many behind the new media curve spend so much energy blaming Google for being good at what they do.Google, Yahoo, and Ask are tools designed to serve Choice for consumers. Spending time blaming search companies for giving people what they want is like GM telling us it is un-American to buy a foreign car assembled in Ohio for less money.  Competition makes everyone better. Even the President noted that last night.

Google's proposed micro payments are an important step in a positive direction as they will blend two important social themes of great importance together.

Wimax: another revolutionary phase for old media begins quietly

Is the roll-out of Wi-MAX in four major US cities part of a true revolutionary event or just another evolutionary step for media?

Readers of anything related to Darwinism know well how evolution is thought to proceed by way of scattered episodes of great change punctuated by long periods of stability. Isn't it interesting that in the realm of social trending we see the same patterns?

A friend mentioned recently how Wi-MAX was likely to be launched in the next year in Atlanta. I had followed this potential development closely more than two years ago and saw endless news stories about delays and cancellations. I stopped following it only to see that as of today Baltimore, Las Vegas, Portland, and now Atlanta have a functioning commercial Wi-MAX system.

To the world of media enterprises this is a "Wow!" kind of development (in the intermediate time horizon). Since most execs in the media business are in their turrets 24-7 with a perpetual game face on these days, this long moment is likely to pass as another piece of streaming bad news. Does anyone remember the Ford campaign last year about their Sync technology? It was definitely targeted toward younger, first time buyer consumers already familiar with it. These two events are about younger consumers and their proclivity to adopt newer and more efficient technology <and why(?)>.  Ask a 21 year old (like my nephew) what he's listening to and watching and he is more likely, at first, to point to his iPod and offer an immediate example. Boomers desperately want to be on the edge of the technology adoption curve but they do not have the advantage that kids today are demonstrating.

Great article about the evolving use and development of new marketing metrics in today's NY Times: Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts.  In the Better Metrics post part III (july 23rd below), I observed how marketers are instinctively searching for better ways to gauge the 2-way communications now possible with their market(s). Industries like old-media enterprises that are dragging their feet to modernize, as if this is justified for any reason, are becoming more irrelevant with each passing successful example from the digital universe. It's not punishment; it's competition. It's all about feedback, the more objective, the better. 

What does it mean when business models of venerable industries break down?

The following post is from  September 23rd, 2008 and is being offered on this site as it is still highly relevant, maybe more than ever.  And while I am tempted to add depth to the discussion, I will stop now at making two updated points:

1. The idea of a social correction is best characterized as a (group) process every society undergoes as part of a natural rhythm where the groups making up the whole collectively decide What Really Matters?. It is a higher order social process than a recession.  Recessions are only part of a social correction. Societies are complex and have many "parts" and this process demonstrates how complexity and chaotic forces act in concert with a larger design. Still, the general characterizations of a social correction can offer insight both macro and micro (specific industries) when viewed through this lens. Businesses lag these social changes--By Design.

2.Combine the posts about Better Metrics below and the January post about What Characterizes the Qualities of Partnership During a Social Correction? for useful ideas on what specific kind of change is needed for media.  Both offer useful insight separately but together, they work even better. Anyway you look at it, change will either be offered or be forced very soon in the media vertical. One way or another, it is coming as consumer behavior quickly migrates away from established tradition to new, more Choice oriented options.

This post is being republished from The Root Trend from 9-23-08. (I publish that site too and offer much broader trending ideas there as opposed to industry specific trending perspectives here)

What does it mean when business models of venerable industries break down?

there's a new post up on the Root Trend site that borrows the three posts below about Better Metrics and describes the business need from a broader social trending perspective. All of this is being processed by Americans right now. The subject of "Free" is popular now not just because of Chris Anderson's new book. Like most subjects, when you relate it to the topic of social mood, even tangentially, it requires an adjustment in your perspective of events. I believe that because of the social trending patterns resulting in what I call the (industrial) (r)Evolution of Media, that "Free" must now be much more carefully defined. When this is done the result will hold considerable (actionable) value. 

Getting Media Companies to adopt Better Metrics requires honest discussion (part 3)

What truly matters as the business of selling content moves forward to better serve its customers during and after the current recession (whatever it is that comes next) ?  As I've suggested in two previous posts, Better Metrics are essential first steps even if the changes that follow these will be more substantial to the media business model.

Interestingly, this loud discussion about how to measure consumer engagement with old media has made the headlines often (lately) as radio businesses attempt to shift to electronic measurement and away from diary based recall methods. The process has been turned into a political football game borrowing from the social acrimony so ever-present these days. And since most statistical methodology is esoteric (at best) the negative nabobs opposed to change are winning the shouting contest by saying 'it's not fair'.  The result of their efforts is that the industry has been distracted from what truly matters at a crucial time.

Just recently, I read where two competitive industry views considered the results delivered by radio's new electronic measurement system (PPM).  They came to opposite conclusions about electronic measurement while looking at the same data.

It's hard to know what honesty is in this discussion with all the selective whining going on. Let's explore a little because it really matters to all media enterprises - and not only to radio businesses:

What the Viacom - Google/You Tube Suit is telling us (entering year three)

8 08 09 --  updated comment -- The subject of IP (intellectual property) is a big and challenging subject. After confronting it in this annual post series, it has become a topic in two different sections of the book chapters I am writing based on the theme of this blog. I feel the need to address it first from a social trending perspective before injecting anymore of my opinion.  I'll probably do that first over at the Root Trend blog. It is a matter for Boomers and younger generations to confront in good faith. The irony is bound to be in watching the graying Boomers fight their younger (selves) fellow citizens with the same vigor as displayed at Woodstock only to realize that time is now working against their narrow self interest. 

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The subject of this 2007 vintage lawsuit is of particular interest to me because it tells us a lot about where we are in relation to media's evolution as we traverse a period of rapid social change.  Opinions presented here are not based on existing interpretations of laws. Instead, the perspective here is about how we are collectively proceeding toward a set of more evolved media tools that people may use to be better at everything we do as individuals and when gathered into our various formal and informal groups to create. Ultimately, this suit is about social progress and how an antiquated way of seeing content (all kinds) is to be expected and, is sure to see substantial change (in time).