If it ain’t broke, break it (Oh, but it’s already broken)
Long time readers of this Website will recognize the advice given to broadcasters yesterday at the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) meeting in New York. The headline in the New York Times says much: Television Stations Are Urged to Break a Few Rules.
“Conventional wisdom, it’s an enemy at a time like this,” said Beth Comstock, president for digital media and market development at NBC Universal, part of General Electric. “In media today, I don’t think there is a single rule that can’t — and frankly, probably shouldn’t — be broken.“This isn’t just about driving growth,” she added. “It’s about staying in business.”
My friend Gordon Borrell (he of Borrell Associates local Website revenue research fame) told a panel that it’s a time of great opportunity.
“All media are in flux, and flux is a great time to institute change.”…When it comes to capitalizing on additional methods of delivering content and ads, Mr. Borrell said, “we are where television was in the late 1950’s.”
“We must be like Google, in a constant beta state,” said Christine M. Di Stadio, senior vice president for marketing and new media at the New York Times Broadcast Media Group. Her reference was to the myriad test products and services offered on the Google Web site.Local stations ought to offer opportunities for social networking on their Web sites, Ms. Di Stadio suggested, to compete with popular services like MySpace; streaming video, to compete with Web sites like YouTube; and mobile marketing.
As an example, Ms. Di Stadio described a “mobile physician finder” she is developing, listing doctors and their telephone numbers. Cellphone users will be able to “click on the phone number and dial, using click-to-call technology,” she said.
“Guys, we needed all these screens to come along to make us exciting and vibrant again,” Ms. Di Stadio said, laughing.
But here is my warning amidst all this excitement. Embracing the multi-platform universe isn’t going to rescue your business for two reasons. One, the business disruption isn’t coming from multiple platforms; it’s the drift from mass media to personal media. And, two, if multi-platform is your only strategy, you are assigning yourself to the content-provider (only) space for the future. The real opportunities are on the aggregation side, not just in making content available everywhere.
There is so much more available to local broadcasters than trying to shift their reach-frequency business model to other worlds. That vision keeps me on the outside with groups like the TVB and NAB, but that’s okay. Wisdom is justified of its children.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 21st, 2006 at 10:19 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
