Helmsley Media

I have to say, Tech Dirt is one of my favourite websites right now. Half of all the interesting media industry related articles I’m reading right now are coming from them. Anyway, I came across this interesting article about NBC’s general counsel Rick Cotton suggesting that NBC and SNL gained nothing from “Lazy Sunday” going viral on YouTube, and that the small start-up only became successful as a result of this piracy (or perhaps this TYPE of piracy).

To be fair, I did not see or hear Cotton making these statements, but I do believe that old media companies like NBC would have inflexible views like this and how they can leverage their content online for exposure. SNL was starting to lose it’s luster when they started to have these viral hits. I watch SNL now hoping to see a new, good digital short.

I do understand their reactionary behaviour to this situation, they are desperate to find a way to either stop, or profit from the current direction that media is headed, but they have to realize that trying to stop it is not going to be successful. I do agree that content providers are being stolen from when people use Bit Torrent and other online video sharing services, but you aren’t going to stop it, so you need to find a way to COMPETE AGAINST it. That’s what iTunes has done with their store.

The trend of the last decade or longer within the media industry has been one of acquisition and consolidation. By gobbling up other media properties you could have access to massive libraries of content, a much broader range of distribution options, and you could cross license this content across these new distribution options. My favourite example was when NBC merged with Universal Pictures giving Conan O’Brien free access to a whole library of silly, out of context, Walker Texas Ranger clips. Every night Conan would surprise us with a new clip, absolutely hilarious, and all because of media mergers.

While I loved the Walker Texas Ranger clips on Conan, I think the problem now is that a number of media companies have gotten too big, and too difficult to manage. By and large media companies are tightly connected, or they should be tightly connected, with the zeitgeist. That used to be the case for big media, for traditional media, but they are failing to stay connected. With the internet and social media taking hold of a whole new generation of media consumers traditional media companies are struggling to adapt.

Traditional media companies are used to an editorial model where they get to dictate the conversation. They tell us what we get to read, listen to, and watch. Our options are limited to what they are offering, which is not as broad as we would like it to be. The internet has increased our ability to connect and communicate with each other like no other invention since the telephone did, and as a result we have the tools available to create content for every type of interest. Traditional media companies are going to need to learn how to collaborate with their audiences, to ask them what stories they want to here, and to ask for their help in creating these stories.

Eventually media companies are going to start shrinking again, at least from the content production side of the equation. The new media companies are going to be leaner, size won’t be as important as profitability. The real money is going to be in connecting people together, in consolidating audiences together, and then segmenting them for your advertisers to reach the most specific of niche markets. That’s how Google will become the most powerful media company, and other companies are going to need to find ways of doing a very similar thing.

Newspapers and magazines all around the world are reporting significant drops in their circulations, and consequentially lower advertising revenues. I think books are safe because even gadget nuts like me still like a real book, but I think it’s fair to say that print publishing is on it’s way out with online publishing coming on strong. But what about television?

Not long ago TV networks were the golden eggs of a media empire’s portfolio, but nowadays they’re struggling. Between PVRs cutting out the ads, and online video stealing young eye-balls, the television networks have seen better days. Just last week Canadian broadcaster Canwest Global wrote off over $1 billion in value as a result of expected “softness” in the advertising market. You could explain this as an economically related issue, but network TV just isn’t going to be as big as it once was. Cable television has taken off as more and more specialty options become available, but I think in the end their will be a convergence between traditional television and the internet.

So what is the video landscape going to end up looking like? I think there are going to be an amazing number of offerings available to consumers. With internet bandwidth costs going down and download speeds going up, even the most obscure niche markets are going to be profitable to serve. Perhaps Ferret TV won’t be offered by your local cable TV provider, but online they could have a global audience of Ferret lovers that far exceeds any local market. The future of video isn’t going to be about appealing to the lowest common denominator, it’s going to be about aggregating the long-tail markets.

This is a concept that has made Google billions from it’s Adsense program. By offering an easy means through which one can monetize their very niche content, Google has allowed people to prosper in the long-tail. Can the traditional media companies compete in this type of market place? Not likely. I think Google has got this type of offering under wraps, at least from the contextual advertising perspective, but their are a great number of affiliate programs which allow niche website owners to become salespeople for niche goods. But I still don’t see traditional media companies getting on board with affiliate programs.

Online there are very few barriers to entry. Therefore it’s very difficult to do anything of massive scale before someone else comes along and copies you. You can’t get enough of a head start to keep them out of the market, and you can’t use deep pockets to out spend them either. Expensive production values aren’t going to make that big of a difference with online video, although that could change once bandwidth allows us to stream HD content. I know that shortly the Docsis 3 cable modem standard will be released, and that should allow significant gains in transfer speeds.

Previously content was king, but in a media landscape where the depth and scope of content offerings are so broad, it’s hard for me to believe that anymore. The minimum threshold for the quality of content is lower now. Sure if you spend $1 million on some internet based video you could get a lot of viewers, but a thousand videos costing $1,000 would probably do much better. On the internet it’s more about being prolific in your content generation. Our attention spans are much shorter online. We jump from page to page, from tab to tab, and nothing really holds our attention all that long. Even as we watch television, we have way more channels to choose from so we tend to flip around to see a bit of everything. The more general media offerings will always have a place. People will always enjoy the higher production values, and the big stars. What I think is going to happen though, is people aren’t going to pay quite as much attention to the mass media, their attention is going to be spread thinner, and as a result mass media will lose some of it’s value. That is going to be great for the small time internet media producer : )

Helmsley Media is now live and broadcasting to the world.  I launched this website as a blog as opposed to a traditional corporate website because I wanted to fully embrace the direction that I feel the media industry is headed.  Old media is trying to resist this revolution, and that provides us new media types with some tremendous opportunities to try and sneak our way into the business.  Media is headed towards interactivity and openness with it’s consumers, and a blog is a great way to feed off of that.

I can’t say for certain what direction this venture of mine is going to head as lots of new things are happening within this industry everyday, but I will reveal what my current vision for it’s future is.  After my first failure in business, trying to create a media production services business, I have learned that I am best suited in an online business environment.

This blog will be used to talk about my different media properties and how one can go about developing successful media properties, but also as a means to comment on the industry and to network with those involved.  Hopefully it also serves as a way to chronical the growth of an innovative, successful media company.