edithhopegardenjournal

NBCUniversal’s investments this month in Vox Media and BuzzFeed firmly place the audiovisual giant in a strong position to benefit from cross-platform advertising and content distribution. The company this month invested $200 million in each of the two leading digital firms that operate portfolios of sites and are strong players in social media distribution. The move will make it possible for them to jointly offer advertising packages for major events such as the Olympics and provide new avenues to promote the broadcast and cable programs and motion pictures from NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of cable/internet giant Comcast, which itself owns about 14% of Vox Media. The investments reveal the increasing importance of digital and social media as channels to consumers and that legacy media companies are gaining better understanding how they can be used to advantage. It also indicates that legacy companies like NBCUniversal do not have the capabilities and skills to directl...

It is increasingly being argued that the Internet provides “digital surplus” to consumers and that this surplus is a means of understanding the value of the Internet to users and society. Measuring the surplus presents a host of challenges, however. First, the Internet does not produce content. Private enterprises, public entities, and individuals create content with different motives and compensation demands. These are offered under varying business strategies that determine how and how often the content is available on the internet. Secondly, Internet gateways—ISPs, search engines, and aggregators—have a significant influence on consumers’ content choices. Consumers use relatively few gateway services, but they access content from multiple providers. The nature and sources of that content are highly influenced by the gateways, their preferred content providers, and the algorithms they employ in filtering content. Determining whether consumers obtain value for money in terms of pr...

The European television industry is one of the most balanced in the world, with public service broadcasters, advertising-supported broadcasters, and pay television operators reasonably dividing television revenues among themselves. For the 27 countries of the EU, pay TV accounts for about 38% of total revenue, public funded broadcasters for about 34%, and advertiser supported television for about 28%.   Unlike the US where private television dominates, most Europe private television began after liberalization broke the monopolies held by public service and state television in most countries. It has taken decades for private television to establish a mature place in the market.   When looking specific countries, however, total spending on TV (advertising, subscriptions, public funding) is not evenly spread. Adjusted for population, it ranges between €5 and €30 per person among nations, with an average of €15. There a notable differences between southern, central, and ...

The Federal Communications Commission has moved to keep Internet service providers from limiting or unreasonably discriminating against content provided by competing services The regulations are designed to keep telephone and cable companies that provide phone services from using their Internet services to limit use of Skype and other online telephone services. It is also intended to halt them from making content provided by audio and video service providers they do not own less desirable by limiting downloads from firms such as Netflix or Hulu or providing faster service only for their own content. The rules are designed to maintain a level competitive position on the Internet and to restrict the abilities of companies that dominate access to the Internet from using oligopolistic control of the service points to harm content competitors. The regulations require that services allow their customers equal access to all online content and services, but allow the services some fle...

Since the emergence of cable and satellite television services there has been struggles among platforms to increase their attractiveness to audiences and to draw market share from terrestrial television in developed nations. These struggles have had affected content producers, broadcasters, platform operators and regulators attempting to fashion socially optimal broadcasting systems. In the first competitive struggles between terrestrial broadcasters and cable operators, broadcasters controlled the highest quality contemporary programming and cable operators primarily competed by offering a wider variety of channels and providing premium movie channels. In many locations broadcasters actively sought regulatory policies to keep their channels from appearing on cable in order to reduce its attractiveness as a competitor. As cable matured and satellite services emerged, the nature of the struggle shifted as greater subscription and advertising revenues allowed cable networks to o...

One of the most exciting developments in journalism is the widespread appearance of online news startups. These are taking a variety of not-for-profit and commercial forms and are typically designed to provide reporting of under-covered communities and neighborhoods or to cover topics or employ journalistic techniques that have been reduced in traditional media because of their expense. These initiatives should be lauded and supported. However, we have to be careful that the optimism and idealism surrounding these efforts not be imbued with naïveté and unbridled expectation. All these initiatives face significant challenges that require pragmatism in their organization and sober reflection about their potential to solve the fundamental problems in the news industry today. We need to recognize that these online initiatives are not without precedent. We can learn a great deal about their potential from other community- and public affairs-oriented media endeavors. Community radio, local p...

Traditional media industries and companies are overwhelmed with an atmosphere of consternation and fear today. Trade publications and industry association meetings are filled with news of diminished budgets, reorganizations, consolidations, and layoffs. People say traditonal media are declining and will soon disappear. Potential employees are wondering if there is a future for them in the industries and senior employees are hoping their jobs will last until they reach retirement. Everyone is pointing the finger,but most of the blame for killing traditional media is laid on the Internet, mobile media, and young people. There is just one problem with their scenario. IT’S NOT TRUE. We have deluded ourselves into thinking that well established media are dying and that young people are uninterested in traditional text and audiovisual media. Although new distributors of information and entertainment abound and video on demand and consumer-created content are increasing daily, consumers’ grea...