Global Neighbourhoods

TV Networks have another year of decline

Crain's New York reports three major TV networks had another year of significant decline. The online business publication reports:

"Facing increased competition from cable and new forms of entertainment on the Internet, the broadcast networks have seen their hold on the American psyche slipping. This trend continued in 2007, when after a fairly promising upfront early in the year, the networks failed to produce the hits they needed to re-establish themselves. As of December, the networks' prime-time ratings in the key 18- to 49-year-old age category were all down: at NBC by 11%, at CBS by 10% and at ABC by 5%."

This news does not surprise me. But the data points are nce to confirm what so many of us have said would be the case. The networks, when their talent pool is not on strike, believe the route for their comeback is to give viewers the same crap they've served up for years, but to spend more on the hype to get you to watch.

I predict that we are closer than people realize to the point when their are more people watching online video than Network TV.

US Ad Rev doing just fine, thank you

According to CNET's Alex Moskalyuk, US Ad revenue will grow to $152.3 billion in 2007 a gain of 2.3%. Internet of course will enjoy the biggest gain of 16 %, but according to the ZDNet Research, Cable network advertising will grow by 5.9 % and consumer and Sunday Magazines will grow by 5.9%.

Maybe, these guys know what they are doing.  Maybe not.  They just might be stuffing a dead horse with dollars.

The Day the Newspapers Died--Part 2

A while back, I posted something called The Day the Newspapers Died. That day seems closer today. Over the week end, the San Francisco Chronicle announced that it would cut 80 reporters and 20 editors or one-fourth of staff in coming months. A cursory glance of the newspapers finances will tell you that this move is unlikely to be enough to save the paper's life. Since Hearst Corp bought it in 2000, it has lost over $330 million on its investment, and an estimated $25 million in the first quarter of this year.

Sooner or later it adds up.

The 100 members of the editorial staff is just a teaspoon in a very big budget. According to Greg Jarboe, CEO of SEO-PR, has estimated that there are some 75,000 fewer full time jobs in North American journalism today than there were seven years ago when Hearst bought the Chronicle. No one seems to have the total for newspaper losses overall in the past seven years, but I'm certain it is one of those take-your-breath-away numbers you usually see in government budgets.

This is not a good thing and a few gloating bloggers seem pretty myopic in what they are writing. The world is not a better, safer, freer place when newspapers shutter up, when trained information gathering organizations are disbursed, it is not a very good thing at all.

The are questions.  Can the trend be stopped? I don't think so, for a few reasons. First is the arrogance of those running traditional big media organizations. When I attended WeMedia in January this year and actually met some of the people who run America's largest media companies.  Many of them impressed me as an arrogant lot who have their heads so deeply buried in the sand that they are unaware of how the position exposes their buttocks. An executive of one chain referred to the loss of  classified revenue to online resources as a  "long down cycle that will turn around." Another explained to me that media companies liked print better because they  made an average of $90  per print subscriber per year, versus only $5 to $6 per online user per year.

Second, history favors disruption from new companies over course corrections from incumbents who tend to disdain and deny disruption until it is too late.

What comes next? There's a great deal going on in the area of citizen journalism and much will emerge. With our camera phones and handheld devices we humans have the ability to record pretty much everything, everywhere. That is a great capability, but without some organization all that data being dumped on the Internet all the time will be about as useful as reading a stage coach schedule and as interesting as watching paint dry.

Topix.net has started to build an interesting framework for braiding traditional and  citizen journalism on a highly localized plane.  It is still primitive.  There is no space for citizen photagraphy and you cannot subscribe through RSS to the locations relevant to you. But you can see where Topix can go.  And if you imagine live video feeds coming in from Ustreamers onto Topix, you start to see a model for a new kind of organized news service, one that shed the baggage of loyalty to the way it used to be.

Topix is but one example.  There are many things starting in many places.  The survivors of today's newspaper business will not disdain or resent them.  They will embrace them and they better do it sooner rather than later, before it is too late.

SF Chronicle to Lay off 1/4th of Reporters

Confirming reports that it was losing about $1 million a week, the San Francisco Chronicle announced this Saturday night that it would lay off one-fourth of it's editorial staff, or 80 reporters by the end of the summer.

Topix: The Global Local Blog Newspaper

Long before Naked Conversations was even a glimmer in anyone's eye, I had an idea for a global local newspaper.  I got passionate about it, event putting together a small business plan. My issue was that it was not a small concept.

The essential concept was that every event of interest to anyone could e locally covered. My "global, local blog newspaper," as I called it, would cover the local Little League sports teams, would let citizens file stories on pot holes in their town's rats in slumlord buildings.  They would write and take pictures and maybe someday, video record events everywhere. Their may be regional editors who reviewed these stories, but more important, the blogosphere would be the fact checker the way ysers were becoming the fact checker on a new phenomenon called Wikipedia.

There was a monetization concept and it was tied to local advertising.  The local girl's soccer team coverage might be sponsored by local merchants, national events by major brands.  All payment would be based on a buck-a-click charge to advertisers. My global-local-blog-newspaper would then split the ad revenues with its global legions of citizen journalists.

I actually peddled the idea.  i thought I found my partners who had money and were interested in the ad model. except a closer look at them revealed they were direct marketing wolves in social media clothing.  I then pitched the idea to a couple of "online media" folk at Knight Ridder, who used that kindly pedantic attitude that essentially said they did not believe for a minute this idea would every work.

It was too big and too complicated for me to start up on my own, so I put it aside as something I would get back to someday.  As the song goes, someday never came.

So when I started reading some of the enthusiasm for the new, improved Topix among bloggers, I respect, I decided to take a long hard look. I had met Topix CEO Rich Skrenta at a conference a few months back and like what he had to say about community focus.  I also found it amazing that as we sat on a panel in Miami, I discovered that we both lived less than a mile apart in San Carlos, CA. In his talk he had been hinting along the lines of my old dusty project, and we talked about getting together once we were back in the hood. We never did.

I spent a couple of hours kicking around the new Topix this morning and I cannot say that it has fulfilled the vision I had back in 2003.  But I do think it has built out the essential framework and has the potential to build out the entire concept of the Global-local-blog newspaper.

I hope so. I'll keep watching.

Infoworld to Cease Publishing

Noted Co-Author Robert Scoble is reporting that Infoworld, the venerable tech trade publication has announced it will cease to publish. This weekly San Francisco-based IDG publication has been around as long as I can remember and for many years, was a must-read for the entire IT industry every Monday morning.

This was during an era when "every Monday morning" was fast enough.  In recent years the publication tried to establish an online presence, including blogs, but it never quite caught on. The death of this publication does not surprise me, but it also does not make me particularly happy.