Media Industry trends 2009 and beyond !
Ive made a few predictions for 2009 and would love to hear what you think.
In 1993 there were 50 large US media companies. Acquisition and merger have consolidated this number down to just 6 very very very large media organizations (such as Time warner, news corp, disney, viacom, and so on).
All of these organizations are heavily investing in web technology and Internet media distribution. We can expect to see of these companies merge with an online provider.
Google revenue is derivative from advertising placed on or around media consumption and is a revenue share with the content owner or distributor. However this is a limiting revenue source; we can expect to see Google acquiring content or content companies thus allowing them to derive 100% of the revenue.
Google is also investing in cable TV and mobile operating systems possibly as frameworks for them to hang advertising business. Interestingly Microsoft are giving up their content provider aspirations and are adopting Google like advertising business model.
The sony book reader is the must have Christmas gift of 2008 (possibly a little overpriced in the UK) . This new media device will open up a new platform for the sale of electronic books. Sony’s and Waterstones hope is that this will be to books what itunes is to music.
Broadcast and post-production automation is high on everyone’s agenda. This goes hand in hand with the exploitation of the back catalog and provides a new high tech market for production and broadcast companies. This is offset by the production cost dropping massively with new cheap cameras and open source software leading to an exponential increase in the amount of content.
Think Bandwidth! Bandwidth! Bandwidth! all this content and content consumption is driving demand on bandwidth up and up and up.
Is Interactive TV dead? the answer is no. far from it.
It just that’s its not on TV its on the iPlayer or VOD instead. And guess what … all the old iTV patents are still applicable. Acquisition of a failing iTV company that owns patent in this area is now being seen as an investment for the future.
Advertising is the engine of the media industry, so with the users being able to fast forward, skip and generally avoid the adverts where is the revenue going to come from? A short term solution is advertising pretending to be content, either in the form of product placement or in the form or well made watch able adverts.
The amount of community generated content has exploded, and this explosion has only just begun. In the near future we can expect to see every piece of human art, cometary and information in video, audio and written form. The number of undiscovered but talented directors, artists and actors is vast. These people will find that youtube is the simplest route to their audience.
The evil overlord of the media industry is the “Minimum Guaranteed Return” if you buy content from a studio, then they will set you a MGR that you have to meet when reselling the content to the public. These MGR’s are falling (mainly due to the change in audience behavior). This will make a big difference to the VOD offering of the content aggregator.
Home shopping channels are dying if not dead, people that have the internet … don’t home shop.
The days of the closed platform are over, mobile operators, cable TV companies games console companies are working how they can open their platform and still derive revenue.
The media market in China is now opening up. It is not uncommon for a TV Show to have 100 million viewers! figures that are unheard of in Europe and USA. Traditional mass media companies that are trying to avoid the change to new media are venturing into this new market.
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