The BBC confirmed today the trend we have witnessed in the US for several years. The business model pairing of content production and content distribution (ad sales/program sales) is breaking down in media companies everywhere. In the short term it appears to be a cost related issue. In the much longer term it is resulting from social forces demanding a significant shift in the dispersal of information labeled as 'content'.
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(post update 10 23 07)
the link from today's FT discusses BBC's need to acknowledge the kind of broad market change coming its way (suggested in this post), and supports the larger theme of the RT by demonstrating how owning the long view first can provide those with a shorter horizon for seeing more clearly the nature of "what's next". The BBC's mission is socialistic in a sense as it strives to serve the needs of all viewers by "doing it all". The free market is demonstrating with remarkable speed that 'doing it all' is antiquated in the current media environment and the only thing holding this old view of media together are the fraying threads of govt. support/regulation. Both are quickly losing efficacy in the digital age.
Just like in the 1860's (the industrial revolution) when the work of craftsmen was removed from the shop and placed into higher functioning businesses (factories) that used new tools and methods to produce both more of the items faster and with high levels of quality will media now be separated into two businesses. One business that specializes in producing content and the other will package content for the universe of expanding modalities and monetize the final product through different strategies. This will not happen over night but, it has been headed that way for a few years.
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The FCC created an artificial barrier to marketing content decades ago and the Internet has smashed it to pieces. The FCC created craftmen of media specialized in both content creation and distribution as if the two have to go together when it was really nothing more than "a land grant by the king".
People/media consumers/society immediately recognizes what it sees and is demanding choice, like never before and the market, all the new channels opened recently, are delivering on this promise. This is exactly how the market responded when facotries began mass producing things once produced slowly and one at a time.
Major media must now force specialization of both content production and content distribution. No longer will an artificial market be securely supported by FCC doctrine in the new age of media and as such, media companies must now change to survive. The global marketplace will ensure the timely transition. This trend is be best viewed in the intermediate time frame and the longer term time frame of years and can be parsed in much finer related issues and especially how they relate to many marketers. That would be an entirely different discussion but one worth having.
In the meantime visionary thinking in the media industry would best be formulated along these broad lines so as to go with the larger forces shaping a much wider universe of competition. If anyone in media were to stop and think about this, there are a great many advantages already owned by old media to getting going now that could be utilized once the old skool idea of making money on the Internet is put down, and a broader concept of multi modality distribution is adopted.
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