July 29, 2005

That’s right, I said Jeff Jarvis

By Kevin

We are really looking forward to having Jeff Jarvis on Pundit Review Radio this Sunday evening at 9pm. Why? For insight and analysis like this,

Milking the old cash cow

As in the case of TV Guide, change will finally come, but only when it is inevitable, and perhaps when it is too late.

: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a picture of what life is like in many other big media companies today. That is what is happening on shrinking newspapers, and in shrinking broadcast and even cable networks, and in many a shrinking magazines.

The cash cowherds run the farm, change is resisted, strategic bravery is rarely seen. Why? They still make a lot of money. Yes, but they aren�??t growing, not in real terms.

And, worse, the world has changed in this decade in profound ways. There is an entirely new medium competing for attention and dollars. This new medium has devalued what you thought was your core asset �?? your stranglehold on distribution, your size �?? and made them into burdens rather than advantages. Your customers, once just a mass, can now talk back and complain. And, most important, in a world where small is the new big, a million small competitors are now enabled to chomp away at your audience, your franchise, your brand, your business, your cash.

Other media companies should look at TV Guide�??s saga as instructive
and predictive: What happened to the magazine that once sold more copies every year than any other magazine can happen to you.

TV Guide is the cow in the coal mine.

and this,

Waaa Waaa Waaa

Michael Kinsley is whining that the internet doesn�??t operate the way he wants it to operate and so he�??s taking his marbles and going home. Or something like that.

He�??s just acting like the old-media guy he is, wanting to control the medium as they all do. But, of course, that misses the essential point of the internet. It can�??t be controled.

The New York Times reports today that Kinsley is going to take some other, unnamed job at the LA Times, this coming only two days after he wrote a column whining about the web and after Dan Gillmor issued him a proper lashing for that. Waaaa:

The nasty parts of the Web are where people are doing what the Founding Surfers intended: expressing themselves and forming communities. Why is the tone of conversation on the Internet, especially about politics, so much lower than in the material world?

This from a guy who spent years on Crossfire �?? the very show that did to political discourse what Jerry Springer did to daylight?