But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself
This Business Week commentary is a good overview of the tipping point media has reached. Also a clear articulation of the problems we solve:
Problem is, imposing higher standards would drive up the cost of journalism while cutting its dramatic value. And that leads to the second issue: The plain truth is that opinionated content -- such as Fox's The O'Reilly Factor with Bill O'Reilly -- is often simpler, snappier, and less expensive to produce than objective content. According to Larry Gerbrandt, a media consultant with Los Angeles-based AlixPartners LLP, it costs CNN and CNN Headline News about $300 million a year to put out the news, vs. about $65 million for Fox. "It is so much less expensive to operate a news channel that is primarily studio-based rather than having a worldwide newsgathering operation with people and equipment all over the globe," says Gerbrandt. "That is an enormously expensive operation."
So this is the emerging business model: You can make money targeting a small partisan audience on cable TV or on the Web, but it's much more difficult to cash in on the traditional mainstream audience for news. That's why NYU's Rosen speculates that CNN or MSNBC may try to attract more viewers by becoming a liberal alternative to cable leader Fox News Network. That may sound implausible, but given the overall business climate, the economic temptation to plunge headlong into the partisan fray is growing ever stronger. The independent press will never disappear completely, but it's not much of a stretch to imagine it shrinking.
But it's not all about partisanship. Just because Fox has made good by producing less original news and more opinion doesn't meant that's the only tactic for solving the strategic problem. It's one tactic, sure -- and it's been successful. Another tactic is focusing on covering news that no one else can or will, and then using the Fox strategy on everything else.
Aggregation. Disintermediation. Convergence.
I hate buzzwords as much as the next guy, but this is what tomorrow's media looks like.
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