Big change at the LA Times
Two weeks ago the Los Angeles Times made a startling confession. In a self-published article they admitted that their web site was not up to the paper’s own standards. Recognizing the importance of the web in maintaining a reputation as a major news outlet, the paper admitted in its own report that, “As a news organization, we are not Web-savvy, if anything, we are Web-stupid.”
But besides just being a confessional, this announcement included a commitment by the Times publisher to turn the web site into a priority. In fact, he stated that they would henceforth look at the web site as the primary vehicle for delivery of up-to-date news, recognizing that “the paper” will eventually be relegated to the background. This is another example of how the newspaper business is being forced to change their business model to meet audience tastes that have changed faster than the media outlets themselves.For Times web users, that will mean more breaking news on the home page and more in-depth local coverage online. I’m betting that it
will also mean that one of the online editions of one of the biggest newspapers in America will finally decide that some of their users might want to see the stock market results on the home page.
Nielsen Goes to College
Starting later this year, Nielsen will begin including university students who live on campus in their sample. To this point, these people have been excluded as not being permanent residents, while students who lived off-campus could be chosen.
This has led to a significant under-representation of young viewers in Nielsen’s results. Obviously, the lack of on-campus students reduced the real number of eyeballs that were available to watch and contribute to the ratings of programs in a given market.
According to a recent New York Times article, as a result of the change, a number of cable networks are expecting a big change. Networks and shows that target TV’s coveted young demos expect to show substantial increases in both ratings and revenue as a result of this change. Next up for all the ratings services should be solving the cell-phone only problem.
Radio Does Video?
Today’s New York Times discusses how radio is moving online with multimedia and video offerings. While this is certainly a way for radio to expand into the true multi-media experience of the web, a much more sophisticated strategy is necessary.
A recent report from Borrell & Associates illustrated how providing video on your website just isn’t enough. In their report, they showed that newspapers pull in more local video advertising revenue than television sites. The reason has little to do with television being worse with video than newspapers or newspapers embracing video; it has everything to do with a content strategy that embraces video as part of a wider solution.
When Desperation Is Good
A recent Borrell & Associates study shows that local newspaper sites generate more video revenue online than television sites. How can that be? This is a question we are often asked: How come the newspaper industry was so aggressive on carving out an Internet presence and moving their business model online?
The answer is simple desperation. While radio and television can point to incremental losses in listening and viewing, the number of people using those media hasn’t dropped much at all. Newspapers, however, have faced disastrous drops in readership. Their only real option was to move online.
In this case, the desperate straits that newspapers found themselves in has thus far been a blessing in disguise--they are far ahead of radio and television in both generating traffic and revenue from local business via their websites.
DVR Surprise
Much to everyone’s surprise, a new Nielsen study shows that DVR owners are not skipping past all the commercials. Users are time-shifting a lot of the programs that they watch (roughly 50%), but they don’t always skip over the commercials. The data shows that about 40% of the commercials that could be skipped aren’t.
This has major implications for the TV industry, which, as we pointed out a couple of weeks ago, is about to switch from program ratings to commercial ratings. Other nuggets uncovered in the analysis are that the most-watched commercials are the last commercials in a break, followed by the first one. Furthermore, anecdotal research indicates that some people like some of the commercials and look forward to watching them again and again.
DRM Fights Back!
Macrovision is a company that provides particularly consumer-unfriendly DRM, including software that makes it impossible for you to videotape some DVDs, and the software that embarassed TiVo last year after Fox shows were unable to be recorded to TiVo units due to macrovision DRM. Macrovision was understandably upset with Steven Jobs recent anti-DRM memo, so they wrote their own open letter to Steven Jobs.
The arguments in the open letter are pretty weak and do little to help stem the consumer demand for practical use of content that they have purchased. The arguments (including “DRM will increase electronic distribution”) all miss the point of why DRM is a problem for consumers--It’s not for any of the reasons Macrovision mentions; it’s because consumers want to be able to manipulate and consume digital content they purchase in ways that are convenient to them.
If a consumer purchases a digital song, he or she will want to be able to play it on a home stereo, in the car, on their iPod or MP3 device, and on their computer. They may even want to make a collection of music and give it to someone as a gift. All of these things are difficult if not impossible with DRM.
Macrovision doesn’t see the problem with DRM as being more than just securing legal distribution rights. That battle is still being waged on an artist-by-artist and title-by-title basis (this is why AC/DC and the Beatles are unavailable digitally), but, as an issue for consumers, it has primarily been solved. The real issue is consumer convenience, and DRM has a long way to go to solve that issue, if it can ever be solved.
