A Quick (and Long-Term) Fix for Flailing Media Companies

One quick thought about media.  Two related questions preoccupy media companies and media pundits these days.  What is the role of old media in a new media world?  What is the business model for making money from new media?

These two questions are an odd couple.  Both presume the ascendance of new media even though no one has yet to crack the code on how to make real money from new media.  Maybe there is still a place for old media.  Maybe new media won’t be quite so dominant if they can’t find the right revenue model.

But I’ve got a solution.  In today’s smaller economy – an economic situation that will persist for some time to come – consumers want deals.  They don’t just want deals.  They still want innovative, value-added products.  But in a smaller economy, it is simply a fact that consumers have less money to spend, so even with innovation, good deals are essential.

So that’s the answer for media – be the best place for consumers to find good deals.

This seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?  But that’s not how media properties position themselves nowadays.  To advertisers, it’s always about eyeballs (so to speak).  But what is it to consumers?  What draws consumers to one sort of medium versus another?  Different media attract audience attention by delivering something that consumers want.  Just like products, media have to deliver a benefit worth paying for (and for media, even with subscription or usage fees, the relevant currency is attention).

Traditional market structure research into habits and practices splits media benefits into categories like information, entertainment, connection, and so forth.  Different media do better or worse on each, and promote themselves to consumers in terms of one versus the other.  All of this is important, but probably not the single best opportunity for media struggling to connect with consumers (old media challenge) in a profitable way (new media challenge).

The very best way to connect is to engage consumers on something that is highly important to everyone.  Right now, that is finding good deals.  No medium owns this space.  If consumers knew that they could turn to a particular medium like TV or to Internet portals or to newspapers for the best deals, that medium would dominate the media landscape.  An old medium would quickly reestablish itself; a new medium would quickly move to a solid model of profitability.

Yet, no medium is seen to be the best place to go for what matters most to consumers struggling with a smaller economy.  This is the real failure of media.  It is the biggest opportunity, too.  [J. Walker Smith]

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