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posted by janrinok on Monday June 29 2015, @04:55PM   Printer-friendly

Michael Wolff writes in the NYT that online-media revolutionaries once figured they could eat TV's lunch by stealing TV's business model with free content supported by advertising but online media is now drowning in free and internet traffic has glutted the ad market, forcing down rates. Digital publishers, from The Guardian to BuzzFeed, can stay ahead only by chasing more traffic — not loyal readers, but millions of passing eyeballs, so fleeting that advertisers naturally pay less and less for them. Meanwhile, the television industry has been steadily weaning itself off advertising — like an addict in recovery, starting a new life built on fees from cable providers and all those monthly credit-card debits from consumers. Today, half of broadcast and cable's income is non-advertising based. And since adult household members pay the cable bills, TV content has to be grown-up content: "The Sopranos," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "The Wire," "The Good Wife."

So how did this tired, postwar technology seize back the crown? Television, not digital media, is mastering the model of the future: Make 'em pay. And the corollary: Make a product that they'll pay for. BuzzFeed has only its traffic to sell — and can only sell it once. Television shows can be sold again and again, with streaming now a third leg to broadcast and cable, offering a vast new market for licensing and syndication. Television is colonizing the Internet and people still spend more time watching television than they do on the Internet and more time on the Internet watching television. "The fundamental recipe for media success, in other words, is the same as it used to be," concludes Wolff, "a premium product that people pay attention to and pay money for. Credit cards, not eyeballs."


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  • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:30AM

    by stormwyrm (717) on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:30AM (#203183) Journal
    There's an old article, "The Submarine [paulgraham.com]" by Paul Graham that talks about just this. "Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms." I wonder whose press hit from the big PR submarine this article is. Another choice quote from Graham's article: "If you really want to be a critical reader, it turns out you have to step back one step further, and ask not just whether the author is telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all."
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