We've all seen the video on "Discovery Channel" or whatever:
This is how I have always viewed the Drive-By Media.
They have that special "swarm mentality" about them.
Posted on 06/12/2006 12:43:51 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Every day we read articles about how the major media companies are dealing with the Web. Some are adopting podcasts, some are putting delayed programming on the Web. Still others are adding augmented programs or additional scenes to their Web entities.
OK, I'll say it: It's all nonsense. That's right. It is all much ado about nothing. Because the economics of the Web simply aren't there.
The economics aren't there for the major television networks because the Web ad dollars are dwarfed by what the networks take in for regular programming. And when it comes to hits, one run of a show is equal to the revenue these guys might take in from weeks of Web traffic. In fact, any time spent by senior management on the Web is a misuse of time because of the disparity between the money taken in by broadcast and the money taken in by the Web. Sure, March Madness worked for CBS, but it works for millions; the CSI franchise works for billions. And how many other programs are like March Madness, with daytime games that need to be watched by the in-office audience? I can't count even five.
Newspapers gain little traction with the Web. A few display ads in a newspaper's front section or some want ads in the back are more than anything the Web brings in. Plus, these places have huge vested interests in print, including an infrastructure that is huge and must be used to get the money's worth out of it.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestreet.com ...
" if every print entity went out of business, there wouldn't be as much content for Google and Yahoo!, but surprise, surprise, the next generation may not even care."
Bump
If the Old Media would put its resources to work and come up with some quality reporting...it might make it on the web. But the pap that they run on more traditional venues just does not sell well here. One you spot an item or three that is shoddily reported, you don't go back for more.
We've all seen the video on "Discovery Channel" or whatever:
This is how I have always viewed the Drive-By Media.
They have that special "swarm mentality" about them.
Good description of the swarm mentality. However, you're giving them the same intelligence as ants -- may not be warranted.
The advantage they have is that people still like and trust them. We could get financial information from any number of sources, but the Journal has over a century of reliability on their side.
I don't think they have anything to worry about.
I don't know about the NYT, the Washington Post's just as good and you can read it for free. I know a lot of people resent Times Select. Personally, I think the WSJ's strategy is better - the opinion columnists are free, because after all that's how you want to change the world, and you pay for the raw news reporting.
As for other media, certainly web revenues are going to increase as more and more people use it. The $ 0.25 or $ 0.50 you pay for the newspaper only goes to printing and delivery; the paper itself is paid for by advertising. So really if the quantity of web advertising can equal the quanity of paper advertising we might be OK. The problem is that the newspapers used to be an aggregation of services that we can now get directly without the middleman. If we want the weekly grocery ads, we can go to the grocery web sites instead of getting them out of a newspaper. And of course craigslist is a much better source for classified ads than the grimy old classifieds.
So many of the things that were the mainstay of newspapers will now be gone in the future.
That's a big revenue model problem, and I think we should be a bit more sympathetic towards it, since the same newspapers we criticise create and pay for the articles we read here.
That's why I pay for the WSJ. Great original reporting and conservative to boot.
D
WSJ Subscriber Bump
Cramer has made lots of money via non-Web media, i.e. television, but not by selling ads.
http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/01/0301cramer.html
He's probably sitting on some slumping positions in the shares of major TV and newspaper publishing companies, and hoping to give them a quick little bump so he can reduce his losses as he unloads them.
So, when you read about all of these attempts by old media to be involved with the Web, remember that the old model is where the money is, and all these companies are doing is shifting content from some distribution that pays the freight to another that doesn't. Shrinking margins, shrinking ability to capture value, lower share prices, not higher ones -- that's what awaits them.
Reinsurance Abuses At End, Buffett Says. . .
Buffett also offered a grim outlook for the newspaper industry during a three-hour news conference a day after Berkshire's annual meeting, saying he sees no clear way for papers to stem recent circulation declines or turn Internet operations into highly-profitable enterprises. "The economics for newspapers are worse now than they used to, and the prospects are worse," said Buffett, a long-time director and large shareholder of The Washington Post Co.
Buffett said declines in circulation result from readers turning to alternative sources , such as free Web sites and television. And he said owning the dominant news Web site in a region is not enough to guarantee sustained profitability for newspaper firms.
As an example, he cited Buffalo, where Berkshire owns the Buffalo News and Buffalo.com, which he described as the most popular news Web site in the city. "We've got the best position, but it isn't remotely like owning the paper 30 years ago."
Buffett said buying newspapers was once an excellent investment because the dominant paper in any city could count on steady advertising revenue and could raise ad rates, often as much as it wanted, every year. With circulation dropping, that is no longer the case, Buffett said.
New media bump!
Thanks for the ping and for posting the link and excerpts to the Buffet article, which I have just read in its entirety.
I get the impression he wants MSCNNBCBSABC and the print MSMS to not only to stop providing free content for the portals and 'wasting' their efforts, but to get harshly into exclusive ownership of their product on the web, i.e., turn into an RIAA wannabe for news and media content, instead of a situation where they actually convert their primary business into a web-based one. Don't see that working for them in the long run, as people are more and more monitor-based and less print-based. But it's a strategy, which is more than the half-assed 'do-a-little-of-both' method some of the big dogs seem to have.
Won't make a difference in the way he seems to think, I would bet. If the MSM were to go that direction, the net-based media would take off, because people wouldn't pay for the content--they'd do without and go with net-based free media.
Fact is, the AP, Reuters, and others turned the MSM into a pack of lazy do nothings. On TV and radio, it is now rip and read from the wire and newspapers just regurgitate the same old crap.
Why would a liberal working in the media even read what is being written? It already parrots what he will write. The ones who actually write stories(not editorials) take the AP news, changes a few lines and off it goes.
We can put the liberal media out of business very easily. A USA today type paper with the same distribution channels, written by people like us. We take the AP story, change the wording and off to the presses.
In one year, our numbers would be better than most and the Slimes would be out of business.
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