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I was about to write my post on how the latest and greatest technology is changing media – until I saw last week’s earnings releases start to roll in from the media sector. Time Warner (TW), Fox and then CBS all posted double digit increases:
CBS saw a 42 percent increase in third quarter profits.
Fox cable network unit’s quarterly income improved by $146 million compared to the same period a year ago.
TW’s better than expected earnings contributed 62 cents per share, compared with Wall Street projections of 53 cents.
The media giants earnings from last quarter are not only good news for shareholders, but for an industry that has seen its share of challenges over the last two years – battling online sites, cord cutting (customers canceling their pricey pay-TV subscriptions), falling TV ad revenues, not to mention the economy. According to this Reuters article, TW and Fox reiterated they saw no signs of cord cutting, a term adopted from the telephone companies to describe the shift from land lines to cell phones. “’I don’t get this cord cutting issue,’ News Corp Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said on a conference call. ‘I feel it is a fundamental service that for American households is a fundamental part of what they do with their time, and what they value in their life.’”
The biggest reason for their strong earnings could be the most telling – and hopefully sustainable – number of all. All three media giants saw very encouraging increases in ad revenue in 2010. Both CBS and TW were up 10 percent, while Fox News Corp was up a whopping 16 percent from their domestic cable channels. (Source: Reuters, “WRAPUP 1-Media Sector Wrings Hands on 2011 Outlook,” 11.3.10)
Political ad spending was a nice shot in the arm for TV, with 2010 being an election year. In fact, political ad spending, for this year, is predicted at three billion dollars and may top 4.2 billion dollars, notes this Adage Age article.
Any numbers from 2010 should come in higher compared to a dreadful year in 2009. Last year TV ad spending was down by nine percent, led by a shredded car industry with the sectors TV ad spending down 23 percent compared to 2008. However, the increase in ad spending this year is still very impressive and driving revenue for a hard-pressed industry.
As quoted from this New York Times article, “’The takeaway is that advertising is strong,’ said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Nomura. ‘The video ecosystem of affiliate fees and advertising seems to be holding up well.’”
This earnings season is proving to be a rebound year for media companies and is confirming what I have been writing about for the last two years – the same idea Sumner Redstone expressed before delivering very impressive earnings – “Content is King!”
The recipe seems simple for big media: provide great content; find a way to monetize the content; keep costs down; and let the content fall where it may. Then kick back and watch the revenue streams flow regardless of which platform audiences use to consume the content. It certainly is good to be king…at least for the moment.
The evolution of social media’s impact on the way we communicate is so vast and is changing so rapidly that experts can’t write their text books fast enough. New developments in social media technologies seem to be positioning themselves in a manner that allows users to find each other online through friends, interests, location, and connecting them offline with tools such as Facebook’s location application, FourSquare and, the communication professional’s favorite, the TweetUp. Thankfully, the world of technology has realized that users seek interaction beyond the computer screen and are finding new niches in the marketplace to make that happen.
According to this TechCrunch article, UnSocial, the newest app for iPhone and Droid, is “geared towards professionals who want to connect with other professionals in similar or related fields, who happen to be nearby.” But don’t let the name fool you, the whole point of UnSocial is to help users bloom into social butterflies within their industry. Using your LinkedIn login/password, the application will ask you to input words that describe your professional background, as well as characteristics of people you are looking to connect with. The app searches for people who match your criteria within close proximity of your location. If you find someone you want to connect with, you can then message, email, or even call that person.
The application is geared toward professionals, but even more specifically toward users attending conferences. The program will help users to more easily indentify the people they most want to network with. I wonder if we will see this app at next year’s PRSA?
How do you see this or similar technology helping media relations and public relations professionals build their offline networks? Do you think that the communications industry will be quick to adopt this type of application at industry events? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
*Bio:Soon after graduating from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, in 2006 with a B.A. in communication and a B.S. in business/marketing, I joined the BurrellesLuce client services team. In 2008, I completed my master’s degree in corporate and organizational communications and now serve as Director of Client Services. I am passionate about researching and understanding the role of email in shaping relationships from a client relation/service standpoint as well as how miscommunication occurs within email, which was the topic of my thesis. Through my posts on Fresh Ideas, I hope to educate and stimulate thoughtful discussions about corporate communications and client relations, further my own knowledge on this subject area, as well as continue to hone my skills as a communicator. Twitter: @_LaurenShapiro_ LinkedIn: laurenrshapiro Facebook: BurrellesLuce
In March 2009 I wrote my first blog post, here on BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas, about how emerging technologies and platforms were changing the way we consume news – supported by input I gathered from a media summit I had attended that featured panelists such as Joe Scarborough from MSNBC’s Morning Joe and BBC’s Rome Hartman.
I wrote, “And with the rise of ‘citizen journalism’ and this ‘Pro-Am’ partnership that is developing with media, the panel agreed that consumers will have a stronger need for trusted brands, filtering, and editing to help navigate the media.” A year and a half later, the cream seems to be rising to the top in this fragmented media universe.
Today the “trusted brands,” such as The New York Times, are beginning to abandon the old business model of offering free content in exchange for paid advertisements. They are instead looking to generate additional revenue by putting their text, audio, and video behind pay walls or by offering their content as an app for a small fee. “I think we should have done it years ago,” said David Firestone, a deputy national news editor commenting on the NYT’s decision to put some of their content behind paywalls beginning in 2011. “As painful as it will be at the beginning, we have to get rid of the notion that high-quality news comes free.”
The Times Co. Chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. added, “This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the Web is going…This is not going to be something that is going to change the financial dynamics overnight.”
In fact, no one is sure where the web is going; this undeniable shift away from free content will certainly make life more difficult for the Googles of the world who rely on free content to fuel their search engine. Consumers may turn to company’s like Apple for their media, who adopted the “paid content” model early on by making content available for small fees through iTunes and more recently showing consumers how convenient it is to access a magazine or newspaper digitally for a small fee on their iPad.
Fox News this week launched its new iPhone political app, available through iTunes for 99 cents. “The idea is that this is your essential guide to daily political news,” says Chris Stirewalt, Fox News digital politics editor, “to put power into peoples’ hands to give them the opportunity in this history making, nation shaping election, to have the tools at hand so that they can really understand and add to the depth of their experience.”
With more people opting to have their media pushed to their smart phones and iPads rather than retrieving information over the Internet it will be interesting to see how this affects web browser traffic. As free content slowly disappears, news websites and aggregators such as the Drudge Report and the Daily Beast may have a tougher time filling their sites with the hyperlinks that contain the raw material that drives much of their sites traffic. Instead the eyeballs will be looking in other directions – with more people willing to pay for content this may ultimately prove to be the antidote that saves a hemorrhaging newspaper industry.
It appears we are on the verge of coming full circle on how we get our news. We’ve gone from relying on newsstands and subscriptions to searching and accessing free content online, only to return to paying the publishers directly once again for their content through app fees and online subscriptions.
Paperboys and newsstand operators may be on the verge of extinction; however, content providers like newspapers, network, and cable TV and movie studios may have the final say in how their product is consumed after all.
As public relations and marketing professionals, how are you getting your news? How do you think the evolving media landscape will affect your ability to successfully conduct media relations and assess the value of your efforts?
A few days ago, I read NYU journalism professorJay Rosen’s inaugural lecture to the fresh crop of future journalists at Sciences Pos School of Journalism in Paris. I’m not going to recap the historically rich (and lengthy) address, but will borrow a piece or two for the purpose of discussion here. (Note: his post can be found here if you’d like to read it in its entirety.) This address was directed to future journalists, but I think public relations practitioners that deal in media relations, can learn from it just as well.
Rosen began with a clip from the 1976 movie Network, which is about a TV news anchor who begins to act out on the air. I realize this was before many of you were born, but please take a few minutes to watch what is probably the most well-known scene in the film.
Rosen believes the filmmakers are “showing us what the mass audience was: a particular way of arranging and connecting people in space. Viewers are connected ‘up’ to the big spectacle, but they are disconnected from one another.” He explains, “But Howard Beale does what no television person ever does: he uses television to tell its viewers to stop watching television. When they disconnect from TV and go to their windows, they are turning away from Big Media and turning toward one another. And as their shouts echo across an empty public square they discover just how many other people had been ‘out there,’ watching television” – concurrently yet disconnectedly.
I agree with Rosen’s belief that this clip clearly demonstrates the great event we are living through today: the breakup of the mass audience and the shift in power that goes with it. What if today’s TV personality acted like Howard Beale? Rosen answers: “Immediately people who happened to be watching would alert their followers on Twitter. Someone would post a clip the same day on YouTube. The social networks would light up before the incident was over. Bloggers would be commenting on it well before professional critics had their chance.”
Rosen goes on to explain, “The media world today is a shifted space. People are connected horizontally to one another as effectively as they are connected up to Big Media; and they have the powers of production in their hands.”
The digital revolution changes the equation, according to Rosen. “It brings forward a new balance of forces, putting the tools of production and the powers of distribution in the hands of the people…”.
From my media relations standpoint, this means the days of blasting out a press release to every big (or small) media outlet are rapidly coming to an end. NO, I’m not saying big media is dead, nor is the press release (sheez, don’t get me started!)
What I am saying is that PR agencies, public relations practitioners, branding/marketing folks, small business owners, etc. now, more than ever, have additional opportunities to reach out to their publics in multiple ways – connecting with their individual audience(s) – and each other wherever they hang out. Big media and small media alike are still very much part of that equation, but now there are even more possibilities.
That’s my takeaway from Rosen’s speech and the clip. What is yours?
BURKE: Chris, now, you know, a lot of conversation is going on around social media. And I know that you’re a member of PRSA, SATW and NASHTA. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re making the most out of your memberships in these times of the hype of social media?
CHRYSTAL: Yes, and that’s a good question. Being a member entitles us to be able to attend the conferences, and when we go we meet our peers and from–people from all over the country who are in public relations or are travel writers. And it’s been very, very useful for us. It’s a wonderful tool because you get to find out what’s going on, what they are doing, what they are saying, what’s happening. You get to catch up on all the latest tactics and industry activities that we need to know. And there are things that you–you might not find that out just sitting behind your computer in your office. You’d have to do a lot of research online to be able to get the same things that you get at a conference. And with the membership in your organizations, you also can communicate with people. You’ve got a built-in network, you’ve got people you can e-mail that they will accept you because you’re one of them, you’re one of the members of the–their organization. And networking’s really important now more than ever, because the industry is changing really fast and really drastically. And it’s a challenge for everyone to try to even keep up day-to-day. It’s never been like this before, it’s never been moving as fast as it is now.
BURKE: Well, thank you so much, Chris. And where can people connect with you online?
CHRYSTAL: Well, our website, travelnevada.com. If they want to contact our media relations department, I’m cchrystal, C-H-R-Y-S-T-A-L, at travelnevada.com.
Big Media, Mass Media, New Media – Oh My!
Friday, September 10th, 2010A few days ago, I read NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen’s inaugural lecture to the fresh crop of future journalists at Sciences Pos School of Journalism in Paris. I’m not going to recap the historically rich (and lengthy) address, but will borrow a piece or two for the purpose of discussion here. (Note: his post can be found here if you’d like to read it in its entirety.) This address was directed to future journalists, but I think public relations practitioners that deal in media relations, can learn from it just as well.
Rosen began with a clip from the 1976 movie Network, which is about a TV news anchor who begins to act out on the air. I realize this was before many of you were born, but please take a few minutes to watch what is probably the most well-known scene in the film.
Rosen believes the filmmakers are “showing us what the mass audience was: a particular way of arranging and connecting people in space. Viewers are connected ‘up’ to the big spectacle, but they are disconnected from one another.” He explains, “But Howard Beale does what no television person ever does: he uses television to tell its viewers to stop watching television. When they disconnect from TV and go to their windows, they are turning away from Big Media and turning toward one another. And as their shouts echo across an empty public square they discover just how many other people had been ‘out there,’ watching television” – concurrently yet disconnectedly.
I agree with Rosen’s belief that this clip clearly demonstrates the great event we are living through today: the breakup of the mass audience and the shift in power that goes with it. What if today’s TV personality acted like Howard Beale? Rosen answers: “Immediately people who happened to be watching would alert their followers on Twitter. Someone would post a clip the same day on YouTube. The social networks would light up before the incident was over. Bloggers would be commenting on it well before professional critics had their chance.”
Cases of where citizens beat journalists to the punch are numerous but a few off the top of my head are: the Mumbai attacks, the Hudson River plane landing, or more recently the Discovery Channel hostage situation.
Rosen goes on to explain, “The media world today is a shifted space. People are connected horizontally to one another as effectively as they are connected up to Big Media; and they have the powers of production in their hands.”
The digital revolution changes the equation, according to Rosen. “It brings forward a new balance of forces, putting the tools of production and the powers of distribution in the hands of the people…”.
From my media relations standpoint, this means the days of blasting out a press release to every big (or small) media outlet are rapidly coming to an end. NO, I’m not saying big media is dead, nor is the press release (sheez, don’t get me started!)
What I am saying is that PR agencies, public relations practitioners, branding/marketing folks, small business owners, etc. now, more than ever, have additional opportunities to reach out to their publics in multiple ways – connecting with their individual audience(s) – and each other wherever they hang out. Big media and small media alike are still very much part of that equation, but now there are even more possibilities.
That’s my takeaway from Rosen’s speech and the clip. What is yours?
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