tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57945085644489368562024-03-14T01:53:00.163-07:00lestrany businessUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-9650117563112101442012-11-06T16:45:00.000-08:002012-11-06T16:45:06.142-08:00Your Career Plan--Think a sort of corporate executive <br />
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You've been going 6-to-late; exhausted by running the supersonic treadmill of life and need you had a distinct job. However you cannot as a result of you've got no time and you are left spent at the tip of each day. Conversely, you are gut tells you that everything would vary if you will solely realize the correct career match. You'll stop striking the snooze button each morning and acquire back to enjoying the sport of life. </div>
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You might be shocked to be told that thinking somewhat a corporate executive can teaches you lots concerning <a href="http://lestrany.blogspot.com/">career</a> coming up with. Marvel how? Then browse on and find out how being a corporate executive has the everything to try to with mapping out a no-hit career. </div>
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1. As a Chief Exploration Officer, your start is to have the interaction in self-exploration. It's the key to career coming up with and decision-making. The higher you recognize yourself, the a lot of au fait career selections you may create. One between the simplest ways in which to hone in on your natural skills, interests and strengths is to re-visit your childhood years, dreams and passions. What did your keen on to do? United Nations agency did you relish being with? What did you wish to play most? What were your favorite sports and interests? Did you've got any hobbies? Wherever did you image yourself within the future? The passed typically holds the simplest clues. You may conjointly need to hunt the assistance of a trained career counselor or coach to help you outline career choices that suit your skills and interests, and help you explore current and future labour markets and trends. Slim down the alternatives and seriously examine one or two career choices that fit your needs. Trust your heart or intuition. It most frequently leads you within the right direction. </div>
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2. As a Chief academic Officer, you would like to look at the competencies and skills needed in your alternative of labor. Once you establish one or a lot of career choices, list the talents and competencies you would like to maneuver foreword. What does one got to know? And what does one presently know? Create a concept to fill the gaps weather or not through college, situation, reading, volunteering, etc. </div>
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3. As a Chief Experiential Officer, you would like to speak to the people that are literally within the career you have known for yourself. It takes you from dream mode to reality check. Search out a minimum of five people that square measure operating within the career field you've got known. Hint, the a lot of folks you interview, the better. You'll realize common themes and knowledge that may be valuable to your career coming up with method and judgment. Do not hesitate in creating the calls. The majority like to name themselves and their experience. If doable, raise to satisfy with them in the flesh. It provides an a lot of high bit approach. After you meet, be candid and curious. This is often your chance to be told from people that square measure operating what you are still brooding about. Preplan some queries rigorously. Do they relish their job? What reasonably education and skill do they recommend? What do they like and dislike? Arouse their recommendations and what they suppose you would like to achieve success within the career. You may conjointly need to have the faith in inviting one between them to be your mentor as you progress foreword in your personnel career aspirations and goals. </div>
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4. As a Chief Engagement Officer, you will have to be compelled to continue prime of your game. Keep self-motivated, energized and engaged within the career coming up with method. Here's the reality. Career coming up with, exploring and creating career selections take energy and time. Have faith in what you will want from yourself, similarly as from your surroundings, schedule and support network to stay yourself engaged and moving foreword. have the faith in what nourishes and nurtures you. What feeds your energy level? </div>
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5. As a Chief Employment Officer, you are your greatest resource find the correct employment. In the end, the career coming up with method leads you to finding the correct job for the correct cash. A mix of statistics and interviews still prove that networks square measure the quantity one resource to finding your next job. Keep well connected and share your plans. Within the finish it's you who's getting to flip career coming up with and aspirations into reality.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-80196253298269414412012-11-02T06:06:00.000-07:002012-11-02T06:06:36.919-07:00The Silver Bullet For Success: Revealed<br />
Looking for the magic formula or the whiz-bang approach that will unlock your<br />
business success? Are you willing to pay hundreds for it? How about thousands? <br />
<br />
Guess what, you are not alone.<br />
<br />
Just as people, for ages, have searched for the fountain of youth, entrepreneurs and<br />
small business owners around the world are looking for the silver bullet for success: that one sure-fire way to achieve the success that they want without doing a thing.<br />
This demand for this magic "success" pill has grown even more desperate and confusing. This need, especially for entrepreneurs, is understandable; time is limited, budgets are not yet created and... lives are at stake... yours. <br />
<br />
Well you can rest easy. Your search is over. Are you ready for the answer? There is<br />
no silver bullet.... or is there?<br />
<br />
While speaking at seminars around the country with dozens of other experts in their<br />
field, I'm amazed at the amount products that can... and will...help business owners<br />
create more successful businesses. I mean we're one of them. The plethora of<br />
information available today is astounding and often... overwhelming.<br />
<br />
This hit home a few weeks ago while I was speaking at a multi-day seminar for<br />
small business owners. I was honored to be among a select few outstanding experts<br />
speaking about marketing for small business owners. I watched the confusion grow<br />
in the audience as program after program (mine included) was rolled out throughout<br />
the three days, as the business owners tried to determine which product best served<br />
their need at that particular moment.<br />
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I watched them. No, I studied them. And, my heart went out to them... mostly<br />
because I'm just like them. I'm just like you-- a small business owner with a vision<br />
for my business and looking for help to accomplish it. While some people at this<br />
seminar invested in a product that met their biggest problem at that specific time,<br />
some didn't at all. Often these purchased products are listened to for a short period<br />
of time; some are even applied... for a short period of time. These tools are often<br />
relegated to a closet or bookshelf-- abandoned for another new tool at another<br />
seminar at another time. Thus begins a vicious cycle that leaves the purchaser<br />
feeling empty, without the business power they were looking for in the first place. I<br />
refer to this to as "shelf-help"--serving only the shelf that these products sit on. <br />
Watching and talking to these business owners... no wonder they wanted the silver<br />
bullet.<br />
<br />
And even though my business success tool, BrandU, breaks down the powerful<br />
brand development process into a easy to follow step-by-step system, once in a<br />
very blue moon one of my students finds themselves sitting with the power they got<br />
from creating their brand asking "Is this it?" "Am I done?" "Where's my success?"<br />
While they carefully chose, and found value in, BrandU what they really wanted<br />
was... yep that's right... that darn silver bullet.<br />
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The bottom line is no matter how much external work you do, learning and<br />
application, emulating and testing, there is no single silver bullet to assist you<br />
reaching your success goals. Success is more like silver buckshot-- a shower of<br />
focused impact full hits. These focused efforts can be distilled down to four major<br />
"pellets" or keys of success:<br />
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o Deliver Value.<br />
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This may sound overtly obvious for most of you, however you must always think of<br />
your customer first and be sure that you are delivering the most helpful and<br />
valuable content.<br />
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o Consistency. Consistency. Consistency.<br />
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You just can't get away from this key-- and you shouldn't. Everything you say,<br />
write, show and do must support your vision and your... brand. In your<br />
presentations, your e-mails, your web site, your content, your marketing materials.<br />
The ability for your customer to completely experience your brand depends on<br />
consistent communication from you. Only then, will they value you.<br />
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o Finish What You Start.<br />
<br />
Once you commit to yourself, a partner, your staff, a client or customer always<br />
follow-through-- to a fault. The corollary of follow-through is under-promise and<br />
over-deliver. Set and keep expectations where they belong-- calm, reliable and<br />
consistently in-favor of the other party. You will be rewarded.<br />
<br />
And finally,<br />
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o Own Your Power.<br />
<br />
Now for the most misunderstood key. You've heard it stated in a number of ways. <br />
To us it means know your power and own the path you travel on and the results you<br />
get from it. If your "inner house" is built on a solid foundation, it is imperative that<br />
your own the power you know you have. No confusion, no avoidance, no<br />
'victimhood' and no excuses. Be a voracious learning sponge. Stand strong, watch<br />
for helpers, take bold steps, lovingly adjust and stand ready to reap the rewards!<br />
<br />
With these pellets in your shell, your silver buckshot is sure to hit your target.<br />
<br />
Come to think about it, the four keys do have one thing in common: they are all<br />
completely in your control. Could that mean there really is a silver bullet for<br />
success after all? There is one true, fail-proof thing that you can depend upon for all<br />
your business success and that thing is... you. Weld yourself wisely; your success<br />
depends on it!<br />
<br />
Make a plan that is supported by your vision, surround yourself with the right<br />
people and tools that specifically support that plan and put the silver bullet that is<br />
you in action. You will experience all the success than you can imagine.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-78205110395696576502012-09-18T05:38:00.002-07:002012-09-18T05:40:46.885-07:00Business Success Tips - once Is It Times to put in writing A Press Release? <div style="text-align: justify;">
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Why create it some extent to put in writing press releases on a daily basis? Chiefly, as a result of they work and produce you the special attention you and your business be. They supply you with the right avenue for saying a giant event, (such as associate degree coming teleseminar or speaking engagement); or sharing a good accomplishment, (such as a bequest for your book); and different interesting events.Iit is your chance to brag a bit, and by all means that you ought to be taking advantage of this. Typically we discover it laborious to toot our own horns; that is completely intelligible. However, in your business, this can be one thing you ought to be doing. You would like to let the medium and potential consumers grasp what you are up to. Think about it this way-if you do not have it away, who will?</div>
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Some fail at their promulgation efforts as a result of they solely do not do them well or they create essential mistakes, that stop them from obtaining the exposure they must. Fortuitously, with the following pointers you not have to be compelled to. Let's bit in brief on the fundamentals for a promulgation and the way to urge the most effective results once causing one out.</div>
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Press Release Writing Tips:</div>
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• in a very shell - A promulgation is one page; 350 to 550 words. It starts along with your complete contact info, followed by a killer title. The discharge itself ought to begin with (City, State) and date that proceeds the gap paragraph. You then enter a dynamite gap paragraph that leaves the reader wanting a lot of, followed by two to three supporting paragraphs that embody a quote from you. Currently shut with associate degree action paragraph telling the readers specifically what you wish them to try to to (i.e., obtain my book!). To high it off, add associate degree "About Us" section (your transient bio). feels like lots, however it very is not. Once you produce a guide exploitation this define and really write a couple of releases, you will see however simple it will be.</div>
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When writing your unharness, clearly state the foremost necessary interesting details. Create it compelling and embody all the very important parts together with UN agency, what, when, where, and how.</div>
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Press Release Submission Tips:</div>
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• Be consistent. Write and submit press releases often. For instance, write an unharness after you initial publish your book, however do not stop there. As before long because the next huge event happens, write a replacement unharness. After you do that systematically, individuals tend to expect to listen to the good things happening in your business. They appear foreword to your next unharness to stay them up-to-date on what you are doing.</div>
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• Add all your press releases to the press page on your web cite. That way, once anyone stops by your web cite, they are going to see all your nice accomplishments in one place. This alone are useful to your business for years to come back.</div>
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• once causing associate degree email pitch, be terribly conscious of the topic line. The standard of the topic line in a very promulgation can dictate weather or not it'll even get opened. Take a look at it out. Channelise a couple of dozen with one subject line; wait to check if you hear back, and so attempt a lot of with a distinct one. It will take a time or two to nail a honest subject line, however it's well worth the effort.</div>
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• once submitting your press releases on-line, forever do a preview initial before touching the submit button. This may help you catch mistakes like having the date line double (some cites mechanically add it), having the title stop as a result of it's too long, and then forth. It is also a good chance to examine and confirm the links area unit operating.</div>
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• Use knowledgeable service likes eReleases. You cannot beat the results you get. Not solely will the discharge gets bent on major medium, however oft their employees can go the additional mile and help you produce a more practical title or with the expression within the unharness.</div>
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These basics ought to help you master the art of writing and causing out press releases. The a lot of you write them, the simpler it becomes. Do not desire to try to to it alone? Then look to the services of a web support specialist UN agency will handle everything from writing an excellent unharness, to obtaining it nice exposure for the most effective results.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-24303663307715836912012-08-06T15:25:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.830-07:00NBC's Olympic Coverage Shows Audience Expectations Aren't in Its Cross Media StrategyNBC’s Olympic coverage in the U.S. reveals the conflict media companies face as they try to simultaneously manage traditional media delivery and digital distribution.<br /><br />The company is getting it right with the traditional broadcasts, garnering excellent audiences and more than $1 billion in advertising—a figure that surprised even its most optimistic executives and may allow the broadcaster to break even on the games which have traditionally been a loss leader for the company.<br /><br />The company is also giving audiences more coverage than every before by streaming additional content on cable channels and digital live streams. These are provided on platforms that consumers have come to expect will give them the power to choose when, where, and on what device they will be viewed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In order to support its traditional, advertising supported services, however, NBC has used tape delays on the broadcast services and has excluded many sports or blacked them outs on live streams—angering millions of consumers and setting off one of the greatest storms of criticism in the history of social media.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In trying to put its feet in both distribution markets, NBC is forcing the digital community to live by broadcast rules and in doing so has disrespected the audience and norms of cable and online platforms. The result has been widespread audience frustration and anger. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The only thing keeping audiences from going elsewhere are the exclusive national rights and the fact that most users don't have enough technical skills or inclination to bypass the ISP-based protections against streaming material from other countries. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />Hopefully, NBC will learn from the experience and get the formula better for the 2016 Olympics.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-88034988928792238712012-08-01T01:22:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.932-07:00The Daily’s rocky performance shows legacy brands create digital advantagesThe News Corp’s launch of the tablet newspaper The Daily in February 2011 was heralded as the future of news and revealing opportunities for major new entrants in the news market. After a year and a half of operation, the digital newspaper has lost more than $30 million, managed to gain only 100,000 subscribers—not a trivial amount but low for a global player, and has just announced that it is cutting 1/3 of its editorial staff and ending original production of sports news and commentary.<br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Journalistically The Daily is not a bad news product and its app is facile and effective. So why hasn’t it been more successful? The fundamental problem is that the digital-only paper has been overshadowed by the success of legacy print newspaper brands in the market for digitally delivered news. </div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The Daily has never been so brilliantly written and edited that it could gain the significant attention and acclaim needed to overcome the brand advantages of legacy news providers. Major newspaper—such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Financial Times—have used the strengths of their reputations and brands to make the largest inroads in digital subscriptions. Concurrently, larger</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">local and regional players have also been grabbing paid digital customers in their markets and providing additional competition to the digital startup.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The Daily has also had to compete with widespread availability of free digital news from news providers such as BBC.com, CNN.com and aggregators such as Yahoo! and Google. These have all been successful in attracting consumers who are less attached to print news providers and paid services.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Those who predict the demise of legacy newspaper companies often forget the critical importance of the credibility and trust those companies have with news consumers and many assume that print organizations cannot transform themselves into digital players that may become so successful they may one day drop their print editions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Brands are important for habitual news consumers and they tend to be highly loyal consumers of specific news brands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Daily has been unsuccessful in breaking that loyalty, but more successful in creating relationships with persons who have not been strongly bonded to legacy brands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It remains to be seen whether News Corp. will be willing to maintain a relatively small news digital brand among its holdings, even if it manages to move The Daily into operating profitability.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-35865880359405034632012-07-27T04:01:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.856-07:00Facebook's business problems are symptomatic of many large digital firmsFacebook is wrestling with a business challenge more traditionally found in legacy media: how do you translate consumers that don’t think they have a commercial relationship with you into relationships that that other firms will pay for?<br /><br />Despite 955 million active users and increasing revenues, the company has lost a third of its share value since its IPO in the spring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The exuberance that surrounded its IPO and overpriced its shares has worn off and investors are realizing that being big isn’t enough to ensure business success. Its latest earnings reports show the firm lost money, $157 million, in the second quarter on income of $1.18 billion.<br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Facebook’s challenges are symptomatic of a long line of “successful” digital firms that are experiencing monetization problems, including Yahoo, You Tube, AOL, and Twitter. Despite large numbers of users globally, they still lack effective business models to generate revenue levels congruous with their size. They may provide great communication functions for users, but they are not transforming very well from innovative users of technologies to highly profitable commercial enterprises.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Part of their challenge is that they have to focus so much effort on non-paying customers and those customers think of the services as personal communications—making them resistant to many efforts to monetize them. This problem has long plagued traditional media, but they are conceived as mass rather than personal media and have been around so long that many people are now used to a certain level of commercial exploitation. They also have a proven track record of return on advertisers’ investments that digital media have not yet been able to deliver for many types of advertisers.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Large digital players will continue to evolve and can be expected to improve their financial performance over time, but it will take a good deal of innovative thinking about the business rather than about the technologies and social value of their services.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-66249166738654985402012-07-11T02:56:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.896-07:00Digital journalism reaches sustainability, but transitional business problems interfereThe income streams of digital news providers continue to grow and many have now reached the point of sustainability. Fundamental financial and business problems, however, are keeping publishers from moving out of print and becoming digital-only operators.<br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">This leads many publishers and journalists to continue bemoaning the fact that digital media do not provide as much income as print and many still argue that organized, regular newsgathering and distribution cannot survive in a digital-only environment. They point to the fact that digital advertising produces only about 15 percent the income of print advertising—largely because it does not appeal to retail, display advertisers--and that paid circulation for digital products is growing slowly.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Their analysis is flawed, however, because publishers <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">do not</b> require as much revenue online as offline because the costs of digital operation are so different. </div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Editorial operations account for only about 10-15 percent of total costs of operation of print newspapers, but they are the primary cost for digital operations. About half of the costs of print are taking up by printing and expenses for getting papers to readers; when the costs of paying for and maintaining buildings and land used to house presses and circulation equipment are factored in, those costs rise to about 60 percent of total costs. Expenses to maintain the large advertising operations found in print newspapers add another 10 percent to overall costs and the managerial costs due to the large number of personnel and functions in non-editorial activities add about another 5 percent. Thus, switching to digital operations can take out at least three-quarters of the costs of print newspaper operation, making the lower revenue of digital operation sustainable.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">A growing number of newspaper companies are already generating 15-20 percent of their total revenue from digital operations, making nearly enough money to sustain the kinds of journalism practiced by legacy news media. So why does negativity about the future of journalism remain so high and why are newspapers not yet moving to digital-only operation?</div><br /><div>There are three primary reasons:</div><ol><li>Print newspapers still continue producing above average returns compared to all industries. No publisher is willing to throw away those operating profits even if the costs of print operation are higher than digital.</li><li>Retail advertisers get more return on investment from newspaper advertising than any other form of advertising, including digital. As long as they remain willing to advertise in newspapers, no publisher is willing to give up the revenue stream and operating profits that they now provide.</li><li>Owners of print newspapers have a great deal of capital tied up in facilities, printing and distribution equipment that cannot be withdrawn because few buyers want to acquire the used equipment today.</li></ol>The fundamental challenge today isn’t that digital journalism has not reached sustainability; its how does a publisher transition from the print to digital-only operation in a way that is financially feasible and desirable.<br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The transition is critical for society because it will bring with it the reportorial strength and organization that exists in newspapers. That is something that digital startups do not provide because they generally lack the capital to build and sustain staffs as large as those of print newspapers and because they lack the reputations and brand identity of established papers. </div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Newspaper owners, publishers, and journalists then need to stop decrying the digital revenue problem and start focusing on solutions to the business challenges of when and how to realistically reduce and end the print operations. It will happen at some point in the future; the problem is how to plan and manage the switchover.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-63835626632322438722012-07-01T01:51:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.887-07:00Cable firms and Facebook Continue to Disappoint their Customers<div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Serving and satisfying customers is a crucial part of value creation in any business,but U.S. communication firms continue to struggle with the very basics and are being heavily criticized for poor service, price gouging, billing problems, and generally poor customer relations.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">40 percent of the top 15 companies that most dissatisfy customers are communications firms, according to the latest data from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The companies American most dislike include Facebook and cable systems, which operate as near monopolies and consumerss have no real competitors to turn to for better service. The scores for the companies are:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Direct TV: 68/100</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Facebook: 66/100</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Comcast: 61/100</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Time Warner: 63/100</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cox Communications: 63/100</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Charter Communications: 59/100</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">These are failing scores on any grading system.</span></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The companies have little incentive to spend time and money to improve service and relations with customers b<span lang="EN-GB">ecause there is no real competition that can discipline the market and promote consumer benefits. The problem is compounded because cable services are largely unregulated and there are no watchdogs to demand better behaviour in the absence of market-imposed sanctions.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span lang="EN-GB"></span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">That means the only thing that can drive improvement is company pride, but it is abundantly apparent that these firms have no shame and really don't care what their customers think.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-87645178916776266702012-06-05T23:30:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.929-07:00Letting go: Making sense of social magazines and news readers<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Applications that aggregate articles based on what others in one’s social network are reading and reformat them into an attractive magazine and presentation formats are growing in popularity, but they are raising concern among some publishers. <o:p></o:p></span><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The processes build upon the referral and curating functions of colleagues and friends in social networks and reduce the need for users to go to multiple sites for content on their own. Some of the best known social magazines are Flipboard, Newsmix, Currents, and Pulse. Some publishers are starting their own social reading apps, such as New York Times that has a Facebook app pulling together stories that friends have read in NYT.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Many publishers are fearful of these developments, however, because they represent another step away from publishers controlling when, where, and how readers use their content, reduce the impact of the publishers’ brand strategies, and diminish control over the presentation and marketing of their content.<o:p></o:p></span><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But publishers really don’t have a choice whether or not social magazines and readers grow in importance. That ship has sailed. The real choices is whether publishers use them for best effect and whether they are willing to accept the benefits of having more readers driven to their content and reaching persons who haven’t used their content before.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In coping with this and other disaggregation of content, however, many publishers need to adjust their own ways of presenting digital content. Because readers from social magazines, other aggregators, and search engine are directed to individual articles, it becomes more important to think about how that material appears to these new readers and what can be done in its layout to attract the new readers to stay on the site and sample more content. They are not entering through the home page so greater thought needs to be given to what appears on article pages.<o:p></o:p></span><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Social magazines provide another mechanism by which deliver content to new readers and to existing readers in new ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are not the ‘silver bullet’ for solving publishers’ digital challenges, but they are another means by which benefits can be obtained and pursued.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Focusing on what control social magazines transfer to users and their branding downsides is a distraction for publishers who are beginning to learn the value of letting go of the control in the digital environment. Digital media are now bringing 15-20 percent of the traffic to many publishers’ digital content and they are feeling the benefits of letting readers decide the means and uses of that content.<o:p></o:p></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-90667894814032124692012-05-11T03:02:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.944-07:00Is the future of digital journalism an outside job?Making small digital news providers sustainable has become the holy grail of journalists and the search continues for workable business models and revenue streams.<br /><br />Advertising may produce some revenue, but it will never generate sufficient resources to support digital journalism because so little advertising money is available for sites with small audiences. About three-quarters of all online advertising goes to the top 10 sites and Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo account for about 60 percent of all online revenue. This leaves very little advertising expenditures to be contested among all other players--of which news providers are only a small fraction. At the same time, the prices paid for online advertising are falling because there are so many sites offering advertising, the advertising inventory is nearly infinite, and audiences continue fragmenting.<br /><br />This means the majority of funding for start-up digital journalism must come from elsewhere and online news sites—especially start-ups—are having mixed success trying to construct multiple revenue streams from philanthropy, memberships, events, consulting services, and payment systems. Both large legacy news organizations that dominate provision of news in the digital space and free automated aggregators are hampering efforts of small sites to develop audiences. The primary successes that can be observed have been for start-ups carrying out special forms of journalism or concentrating on highly specific topics.<br /><br />The answer to sustainability may not lie in the business creation and business operational approach. The key to making emergent digital news providers sustainable may lie in the 18th and 19th century approaches to journalism, in which journalism was an avocation and not a profession (or at least only a part-time profession).<br /><br />If one reviews the history of newspaper start-ups around the world, one finds that the bases of journalistic compensation were not journalism itself. It many cases it was funded by public employment—serving as postmasters, teachers, or other civil servants—or by operating commercial endeavours—such as printing firms, taverns, and retail shops (Even brothels funded the costs of newspapers in some towns in the Western U.S. during the nineteenth century).<br /><br />The current inability to effectively fund small-scale digital journalism means that we all need to be thinking more broadly about how we can support the functions and people involved in them. If the past is a guide, we may need to return to provision of local journalism as community activism, political activity, or business support service—all of which played significant roles in establishment of news provision in years past. <br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-18866424598864887372012-04-23T08:16:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.825-07:00The thorny problem of media pluralismThe term pluralism is regularly used in critiques of media and in arguments for public intervention. It is employed so loosely, however, that it allows varied interpretations to be attached and this makes it highly challenging to turn general support for the concept into specific policy. Much of the lack of clarity is the consequence of indefiniteness of the term and because it is used as a proxy for more involved concepts.<br /><br />The term is derived from “plural”, an indistinct quantitative concept indicating the existence of more than a single thing and plurality itself merely indicates a state of being numerous. This alone allows the term plurality to be used in various ways when applied to media.<br /><br />For some it means a plurality of media outlets. This is indicated by having multiple types of media and multiple units of each media and the existence of a range of print, broadcast, satellite, and Internet content providers can represent pluralism. For other observers pluralism means plurality in ownership, that is, a range of owners and different types of ownership. For others it is indicated by the existence of public service as well as private commercial firms so some provision is made by an organisation(s) without direct individual economic self-interest(s).<br /><br />The amount of media, its ownership, and its operation are not in themselves the objects of concern about pluralism, however, and these usages are merely shorthand semantic devices that indicate a collection of political, economic, and cultural concepts and ideologies. Because that collection is not universally agreed, the term pluralism is disparately employed.<br /><br />The term encompasses fundamental concepts in liberal democratic media ideology and neo-Marxist critiques of media. It incorporates ideas of the benefits of free flow of information, ideas and opinions and the value of a variety in artistic and cultural expression. It recognizes the amount of content that can be offered by any one provider is limited by temporal and spatial factors. It accepts that the abilities of individuals to obtain and attend to content are affected by monetary and temporal limitations. It recognizes that operation of media is accompanied by political and economic benefits such as access, privilege, influence, and power and that those can be used for personal advantage and interests.<br /><br />Those who accept these concepts underlying the term pluralism differ widely about the proper means for its pursuit, however. They have divergent beliefs about the roles of the state and the market and differ widely about whether policy should promote beneficial outcomes through regulation or incentives and whether—and the extent to which—non-market provision of content is desirable.<br /><br />The difficulty of achieving the ultimate objectives is further complicated by the fact that public policies promoting pluralism tend of focus on the overt evidences of plurality in media outlets, media ownership, and media operation. Although multiplicity of media outlets, ownership and operation increase the possibility of achieving the objectives of pluralism, they do not guarantee because they are not necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence. Thus ‘external pluralism’ is sometimes not enough. This has led many to advocate for ‘internal pluralism,’ meaning that within a single broadcasters or publisher as variety of content and perspectives are provided. The provision of internal pluralism is typically used to justify public service broadcasting and narrow internal pluralism is a typical critique of private media.<br /><br />The contemporary world creates lower barriers to participation in communication by making production easier and shifting distribution away from technologies that limited the number of providers and content available—the fundamental rationale for concern about pluralism. In the digital media world, the fundamental challenge involving pluralism is not limitations on producing content, expressing divergent ideas and opinions, or access to distribution systems. The primary challenge is the ability to effectively reach audiences. <br /><br />In this environment promoting pluralism must focuses on reducing control over what flows through new digital distribution systems so dominant owners of production and distribution systems are not able to marginalize alternative perspectives and make them difficult to locate. And the fundamental content and attention problem remains.<br /><br />Although digital media provide many more opportunity to be heard, the issue today is not ‘share of voice’, but ‘share of ear’. We need to seek ways to promote knowledge about alternative content and to make it more readily accessible. Otherwise the concentration of where the audience goes—in terms of aggregators and sites—is every bit as damaging to pluralism as limitations on spectrum and concentration of ownership. This is especially true by the Internet service providers, content aggregators, search engines, and video on demand services that pursue their own interests through in-transparent practices and algorithms that skew the access to and distribution of information, even when it is ‘personalized’ by individuals.<br /><br />Those who hold that pluralism is no longer an issue in the digital world argue that its underlying infrastructures are neutral. That technology may be neutral, but the systems necessary to make them function are under the control of companies with their own agendas and the abilities to limit or direct its use in ways that harm pluralism.<br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-82119445108835185922012-03-01T06:17:00.000-08:002012-08-08T17:04:59.913-07:00Changing social power is reflected in the sales of newspaper officesNewspapers across the US are shedding large downtown buildings in favor of more modest facilities, often away from the center of cities. <br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The downsizing is the consequence of reduced need for office space following staff cuts, changes in production technologies that reduce space requirements, and the outsourcing many printing and distribution activities. Examples include:</div><ul><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The Miami Herald has sold its bayfront building and the 14 acres around it for $236 million and is planning to relocate elsewhere next in 2013. It will use the proceeds to pay down debt and pension liabilities. </div></li></ul><ul><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram has sold its home for the past 90 years and will be moving to new offices this spring </div></li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> </div><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The Boulder Daily Camera in Boulder, CO, sold its downtown facilities for $9 million and is moving to facilities outside the center of town. </div></li></ul><ul><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The Tribune & Georgian in St. Mary’s, GA, shed its former building by donating it to United Way of Camden Country in February to be used for work space and a training resource center for charitable organizations. The paper no longer used the building because it had moved to other facilities after outsourcing its printing operations. </div></li></ul>The changes are not just indicative of the changing financial and operational characteristics of newspapers, but of the position of newspapers as major institutions in society. Over the past 150 years, newspapers used the wealth they generated to construct buildings in the center of towns—sometimes monumental and architecturally significant edifices—that reflected their importance and power in the community and their location at the center of society.<br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Social, economic, and technology developments have stripped that wealth from the newspaper industry. But cities are also changing and many downtown areas are no longer the locus of economic and political power in communities. As we continue to move more firmly into the digital age, the physical manifestations of where the center of society is located will continue to change.</div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Changes in media and media industries reflect deeper social changes that will continue altering our lives in may ways for many years to come.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-30615865940293920392012-01-09T11:56:00.000-08:002012-08-08T17:04:59.852-07:00Newspapers increase use of co-opetition practicesU.S. newspapers are increasing their use of co-opetition practices, that is, cooperating with competitors to reduce costs, create synergies, or reduce risk in new markets. Such activities are permissible if they are not designed to create cartels or control prices for advertising or circulation.<br /><br />The latest example occurred this week when the<em> Boston Herald</em> announced an agreement with the <em>Boston Globe</em> for its competitor to print and deliver the<em> Herald</em>. The move creates cost savings for the <em>Herald</em> by allow it to cut printing, trucks, and delivery personnel, while simultaneously creating production and distribution economies and an additional revenue stream for the <em>Globe</em>--a win-win for both companies.<br /><br />Such service agreements do not violate antitrust laws because the papers remain independent, set their own prices, and create their own content. If papers were to engage in such actions they would have to apply for an antitrust exemption under the Newspaper Preservation Act (see John C. Busterna and Robert G. Picard, <em>Joint Operating Agreements: The Newspaper Preservation Act and its Application</em>. Ablex, 1993), but those agreements have not proven successful in the long run.<br /><br />The Boston agreement comes on the heels of numerous printing agreements, including that of the <em>Chicago Tribune</em> and <em>Chicago Sun-Times</em>, that have been made among publishers in the last couple of years.<br /><br />Another example of co-opetition is seen in the 59 newspaper and information companies—including New York Times Co., McClatchy Co., Washington Post Co., E.W. Scripps Co., A.H. Belo, and Associated Press—that have now banded together to create NewsRight to track use of digital content and ease its licensing. By cooperating with each other, the companies have brought more than 800 content sites into the operation and created a significant player in the digital industry.<br /><br />Daily newspaper companies have historically disliked cooperation unless it was absolutely necessary—as in the case of news services. The new types of cooperation emerging show that the preference to go it alone is being eroded by contemporary financial conditions and the difficulties of operating independently in the digital environment.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-27809772205376761872011-12-04T23:51:00.000-08:002012-08-08T17:04:59.842-07:00Convoluted Views about Media Ownership Inhibit Effective Policy<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was recently reviewing the effectiveness of media ownership policies and regulations and was struck by the limited success they have achieved during the past 50 years in Western nations.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">There seem to be two central problems with ownership regulation efforts: ownership really is not the issue that we are trying to address through policy and we have convoluted views of ownership.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Media ownership is not really what concerns us, but is a proxy of other concerns. What we are really worried about is interference with democratic processes, manipulation of the flow of news and information, powerful interests controlling public conversation, exclusion of voices from public debate, and the use of market power to mistreat consumers. It is thus the</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> <span lang="EN-US">behavior</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">of some of those who own media rather than the ownership form or extent of ownership that really concerns us.</span></span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is compounded because media practitioners, scholars, and social critics have highly convoluted views about ownership and most have complaints about all forms of ownership. It is thus nearly impossible to identify a preferential a form or extent of ownership.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We don’t like private ownership of media because proprietors can use them pursue their private interests; we don’t like corporate ownership because companies can put profit goals ahead of social goals; and we don’t like having just public service media because they doesn’t provide enough choice and are often limited in their ability to pursue political agendas--a function important in democracy.</span></span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We don’t like big companies because they can be arrogant and unapproachable and because they can control content as well as markets; we don’t like small companies because they can’t provide the range and quality of content we desire and because they sometimes can’t withstand pressures from powerful interests.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We don’t like foreign owners because they don’t share our identity, don’t represent who we are very well, and can bring foreign influences that affect national sovereignty; we don’t like domestic owners because they can be too close to those with domestic social and political power.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The list of ownership we do not like—and the fact that most regulation is promoted because of particular proprietors we disliked—makes it difficult to fashion effective policies. We are stymied because no ownership form itself is good or bad and they all have advantages and disadvantages. And there are examples of good and bad owners under all the forms of ownership.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">Using ownership regulation to control the</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> <span lang="EN-US">behavior</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">of bad owners can only somewhat limit the scope and scale of their activities, not address their poor</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> <span lang="EN-US">behavior</span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">. It is like permitting higher levels of crime in one area of town as long as it does expand into other areas.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If we are to effectively address our real concerns, we need to develop better mechanisms for influencing behaviour and we need to stop ineffectively regulating ownership just because it makes us feel like we are doing something. </span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-38067739271417688722011-09-24T03:56:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.861-07:00How to Destroy Your Customer Base and Investor ConfidenceNetflix used to have a charmed life.<br /><br />This year, however, poorly thought out strategy and lurching decisions are stripping away many of its advantages and making it vulnerable to competitors.<br /><br />Established in 1997, its founders saw opportunities in creating an Internet-based DVD-by-mail distribution system. It was designed to be a competitor to physical video stores, making it more attractive by offering a larger selection and using a unique IT driven distribution system that combined distribution centers across the country to serve customers within 24 hours at highly attractive prices.<br /><br />The DVD-by-mail service became a hit, ultimately devastating the market of physical stores such as Blockbuster. By 2007 it had delivered more than 1 billion DVDs to customers. That same year it launched on-demand video streaming service so customers could also select a video and stream it to a PC (and later other platforms) for immediate viewing. The company allowed viewers a highly popular choice of physical DVDs or streamed video for the same price.<br /><br />Effective marketing and the enviable distribution system led the company to became the largest video subscription service in the U.S., with 24 million customers<br /><br />Despite--and because of the investments required for--its growth, the company was losing money on its $10 per month price for the joint service, so it suddenly increased it price to $16 dollars (a 60% increase) in July. That significant price change and the poor way it was introduced to customers—especially in the midst of poor economic times, angered customers and created price resistance that led a least a half million to drop the service.<br /><br />Then, in September, the firm announced it would spin off its DVD-by-mail service and rebrand it Qwickster, leaving Netflix with the digital streaming business. Customers were furious to learn they would now have to pay separately for both services. By downplaying its DVD-by-mail business, the company hopes to reduce distirbution costs and its costs for content by moving content from a per rental basis to per subscriber basis that is more beneficial for the firm.<br /><br />Netflix's decisions were not made with a customer focus, but a focus on stemming losses that worried some investors. That strategy is dubious, however, and share prices have fallen from nearly $300 per share in mid-summer to $140 per share.<br /><br />The lurching changes have also made the company’s position seem vulnerable, leading to new competitors to enter the market. Dish Network, which bought Blockbuster out of bankruptcy, is now using it to introduce a competing DVD-by-mail and digital delivery services at competitive prices and Hula and Amazon are reportedly looking a ways to exploit consumer dissatisfaction.<br /><br />The entire episode is a classic example of why companies should never take customers for granted and why company decisions need to be driven by creating--rather than subtracting--value for consumers.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-86151446088273705602011-08-01T14:01:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.925-07:00FCC Moves to Give Viewers Choice and Provide More Competition on Cable SystemsThe U.S. Federal Communications Commission has adopted rules designed to halt cable system operators from retaliating against independent channels when there are business disputes or discriminating against them in favor of ones in which they ownership stakes.<br /><br />The rules are intended to ensure that the monopoly power of cable operators is not used to deny viewer choice or harm competition channel providers. <br /><br />One rule is designed to prohibit systems from dropping channels when there are business disputes with systems that have been taken to the commission for resolution.<br /><br />Another rule is designed to create a more level playing field for independent channels by making it possible for them to reach more viewers. Comcast Corp., for example, has been accused in recent years of forcing competitors’ sports channels into premium packages that fewer viewers select.<br /><br />Given that price rises for cable services have far outstripped inflation rates in recent years, that service providers create bundles of channels that primarily serve their benefits rather customers, and that consumers continually express dissatisfaction with choices, prices, and customer service provided, it is not surprising that the commission decided to act to slightly limit the power of the major players. <br /><br />The big cable players are livid about the rules, of course, and can be expected to be highly active in the next regulatory stage seeking comments on how to implement the rules.<br /><br />At this point they and they supporters are complaining that keeping channels on the air while dispute resolution is underway is somehow unfair to them. The system operators, of course, refuse to recognize how it is particularly unfair to customers who have no way to influence the decision.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-71449271937774323462011-07-24T05:06:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.905-07:00What Legacy Media Can Learn from Eastman KodakWhat do you do when your industry is changing? What do you do when your innovations are fueling the changes? Those problems have plagued Eastman Kodak Co. for three decades and the company’s experience provides some lessons for those running legacy media businesses.<o:p></o:p><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Eastman Kodak’s success began when it introduced the first effective camera for non-professionals in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century and in continual improvements to cameras and black and white and color films throughout the twentieth century. Its products became iconic global brands.<o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The company’s maintained its position through enviable research and development activities, which in 1975 created the first digital camera. Since that time it has amassed more than 1,100 patents involving electronic sensing, digital imaging, electronic photo processing, and digital printing. These developments, however, continually created innovations damaging to its core film-based business. <o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Digital photography created a strategic dilemma for the company. It could move into digital photography and destroy the highly profitable film-based business or it could exploit the film-based business while it slowly declined and then--when it was no longer profitable--try to leap out of the business into digital world. It was an ugly choice and the company chose the latter. <o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Today, the company has just 15% of the employees it once had and its stock prices are about 15% of what they were before it finally stripped out its production capacity and distribution systems. An enduring benefit of its research and development activities is that the company now owns patents on much of the underlying technology used in all digital cameras including those in mobile phones. It is building a new digital revenue stream on licenses and infringement payments for use of those technologies. Those alone now account for 10% of its turnover.<o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Eastman Kodak’s situation is not unlike that of legacy media firms, especially those in print, whose uses of digital technologies two decades before the arrival Internet and whose experiments with teletext and other telecommunication based information distribution systems foreshadowed the arrival of the Internet.<o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Today, newspapers and magazines—and increasingly broadcasters—are faced with dilemma of whether to keep exploiting their base legacy product or to dump the old business and jump fully into digital. It is as ugly a choice as that faced by Eastman Kodak in the 1980s and 1990s. So, what lessons can be learned from its experience?<o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><strong><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1)<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Don’t try to fight change<o:p></o:p></strong></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">You may not like its direction and may understand how it will affect your current business, but you will not be able to stop its momentum and trajectory if it is beneficial to many customers. In such conditions you can only protect your existing product by making it as productive and competitive as possible, by adjusting its strategies to better serve those who are most loyal and resist change, and by carefully monitoring the pace of change and the investments you make in the existing product. Simultaneously, existing companies that want to benefit from the change need to be creating new products for the new markets and allow them to develop and mature with the pace of change even though they may be compounding the challenges in the pre-existing product.<o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><strong><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2)<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Don’t wait too long to change<o:p></o:p></strong></div><strong> </strong><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Waiting to move into new markets with new products gives upstart companies and other competitors opportunities to become players with better products and larger market shares once you decide to enter. Although there are sometimes reasons not to be first movers, you should not wait too long because it is very difficult and expensive to enter and become a major player once a new market moves into its maturation phase.<o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><strong><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3)<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Be willing to sacrifice some short-term profit for long-term gain and sustainability<o:p></o:p></strong></div><strong> </strong><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Careful strategic consideration must be given profits during transitional periods and managers needs to make the strategy clear to the company and its investors. It may be desirable to boost research and development costs even though there is no guarantee they may produce results; it may be necessary to harm the profits of the existing product by building up its replacement and cannibalizing some of its market; it may be appropriate to make investments in the new product that may not pay off in the short-term. Whatever the strategy, it should be the result of clear and deliberate choices and managers need to ensure that investors and entire company understand the reasons for it.<o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><strong><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4)<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Own the rights to technologies and services your competitors will employ<o:p></o:p></strong></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Use your R&D efforts and make strategic acquisitions to acquire the technologies and services that competitors will need to employ in the new market so they must turn to you and share the benefits of their growth. Unfortunately, few legacy media companies invested in research and development to early exploit opportunities in digital media by creating the underlying hardware and software for content control and distribution online and in phones, tablets, and computers. Thus, they own few intellectual property rights other than trademarks to their legacy media names and most are not benefiting as Eastman Kodak from patents being used by those eroding the business base. However, the new products still need content products and content management services that legacy media have long produced and companies need to be open to cooperating with the new competitors rather than giving them incentives to go elsewhere or to develop their own content capabilities.<o:p></o:p></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">These are turbulent times for legacy media and they require making choices and positioning firms for the future. It is no time for timidity or keeping on with business as usual.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-15244311304918705112011-07-07T09:37:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.816-07:00News of the World Closure Shows the Business Cost of a Bad ReputationThe decision to close the <em>News of the World</em> in the UK because of the fallout from the phone hacking scandal shows the importance of ethical behavior and public credibility for media firms.<br /><br />The paper had been hacking the private communications of celebrities, politicians, crime victims, and even relatives of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and then spent four years trying to cover it up by paying hush money and—according to some reports—bribing police officers to ignore its crimes.<br /><br />The paper, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., was Britain’s largest selling Sunday newspaper until it spectacularly unraveled in recent weeks. Continuing revelations of illicit activities and the announcement of Parliamentary and police investigations led advertisers including Ford, Sainsbury, Lloyds Banking Group, Virgin Media, Dixons, and Vauxhall to pull their advertising.<br /><br />Perhaps it was embarrassment—but it was more likely the loss of revenue, the loss of almost $3 billion in market value for the parent company because of declining share prices, the hundreds of millions of pounds in damages that will have to be paid, and the fact that the paper’s meltdown was endangering Murdoch’s takeover of BskyB—that led him to kill the paper. <br /><br />Unfortunately, the scandal shows that some journalists and news organizations will go to any length to get a story, no matter how disgraceful and unethical it may be. Fortunately, the number of journalists who will go as far as those at the <em>News of the World</em> are limited, but the outrageous conduct highlights the growing chasm between those who believe everything should be public and that journalists have a right to do anything to get information and those who believe in a right to privacy and a right to be left alone. <br /><br />The culture at the <em>News of the World</em> that led to the behavior shows that pressures on organizations to put their interests above those of the public needs to be resisted. It is hardly a culture reputable news organizations and companies should emulate. Not only the reputational costs—but the economic costs as well—are far to high.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-8906636581611166742011-07-04T03:02:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.938-07:00MySpace Sale Underscores the Risks of Exuberant Digital InvestmentsThe decision by News Corp. to dump MySpace once again reveals the risks of over exuberance toward digital companies that do not have a proven business model or long-term customer loyalty.<br /><br />There are plenty of digital investments that meet those requirements, but a number of the most hyped firms moving toward IPOs and acquisitions do not. They need to be considered with hard headed pragmatism.<br /><br />MySpace was launched 2003 and rapidly became the toast of the digital world as a social networking site and “the place” for musical stars and fans to connect. By 2005 it was the fifth most visited site on the Internet.<br /><br />New Corp., which was anxious to benefit from growth in digital media, jumped at the opportunity to acquire the service and paid $580 million in 2005. It was an enormous price for a company with an unclear revenue potential.<br /><br />Within two years MySpace had grown to be the world’s number one social networking site and was receiving 100 million unique monthly visitors. But it still had revenue problems; its visitors weren't paying customers and advertising wasn't paying its costs.<br /><br />Despite landing a $900 million ad deal with Google, MySpace reported just one period of profitability. On top of that, it lost its cache with users and its leading position was soon eclipsed by Facebook.<br /><br />Overall, it is estimated that the MySpace lost at least $1.5 billion under News Corp. and those losses dragged down the News Corp.’s overall earnings. The extent of its losses has never been completely clear because its results were not transparently presented in News Corp. financial reports.<br /><br />After desperately trying to revive MySpace, News Corp. put it up for sale with an asking price was $100 million. It was sold in June to the online advertising network Specific Media for $35 million (about 6% of what News Corp paid for it), but the company was really just giving it away to get it off its books. As part of the deal, News Corp. took a minority equity stake in Specific Media.<br /><br />Investing in emerging industries is always more risky than investing in established ones, so it requires a good deal of realism and clear headedness about the opportunities and their potential. It is not good enough merely to throw money on the table in hopes of drawing a winning hand or because the crowd is encouraging you on. A solid business plan that it is already working and producing financial growth and a user model based on more than popularity and status are required unless you investing high-risk capital you can afford to lose, as well as other opportunities it might have funded.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-59768264162478269002011-06-22T02:33:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.882-07:00What Makes Good Journalism?Journalists and others concerned about the status of the news industry in North America and Europe keep arguing that we are getting poorer journalism because of the economic state of the industry. But when you ask them “what makes good journalism?” they find it nearly impossible to articulate the concept.<br /><br />Those trying to articulate the elements good journalism tend to use comforting and immeasurable platitudes and to describe it through attributes based on professional practices: pursuit of truth, fairness, completeness, accuracy, verification, and coherence. These are not a definition of quality, but a listing of contributors to or elements of quality practices. Each attribute alone is not sufficient for good journalism and degree to which each contributes is unclear.<br /><br />In practice, most of us settle on identifying journalistic quality by its absence or by its comparison to poor or average quality journalism. Thus we know it when we don’t see it or we describe by giving examples of excellent journalism.<br /><br />Other industries are far better in establishing their definitions of quality. If you ask what is quality in washing machines, the answer is that it quality machines clean clothing more effectively, operate quietly, are safe, and are durable and reliable. All of those can be measured by specific indicators of dirt and stain removal, water and energy use, noise decibels generate, user injury rates, and breakdown rates. A quality manufacturer strives for better performance on those measures, provides effective support and service, handles feedback and complaints well, and strives for high customer satisfaction.<br /><br />The reason quality journalism is difficult to describe is because it involves a body of practices and the mental activity that goes into those practices. Good journalism results from the information gathering and processing activities, PLUS the knowledge and mental processes applied to it. <br /><br />It is thus labor intensive; it involves collecting, analysing, structuring and presenting information. The best journalism comes from knowledgeable and critical individuals determining what information is significant, backgrounding and contextualizing it, and thinking about and explaining its meaning. It is a creative and cognitive activity. It is difficult to articulate what makes good creative and cognitive activity and nearly impossible to measure these mental processes. Thus, we are forced to use surrogate measures of quality journalism.<br /><br />Good journalism involves engaging language and fluid prose, but it is not merely a well written and good story; it is not necessarily evident in stories that make the most popular list of stories or are most shared on social media. Good journalism involves stories that have import, impact, and elements of exclusivity and uniqueness; it wrestles with issues of the day, elucidates social conditions, facilitates society in finding solutions to challenges, and is independent of all forms of power. Good journalism is rational and critical; it is infused with scepticism, but not cynicism.<br /><br />Although it is difficult to effectively measure such attributes of quality journalism, it should be much easier to define and identify quality journalism providers. There are some surrogate and attribute measures available to rate them, such as the percentage of total costs devoted to editorial costs, the amount of serious news content, the percentage of content originated rather than acquired, the amount and handling of errors, levels of reader satisfaction, and brand reputation. <br /><br />In the end, however, the question of what makes good journalism has to be answered by answering the queries: Good or valuable to WHOM? Good or valuable for WHAT? Only then can one begin to establish direct measures that determine the effectiveness of journalism in achieving those objectives.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-51187445431419585852011-05-29T13:39:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.877-07:00Google, Newspaper Archives, and the Business of Cultural HeritageGoogle announced this month that it is ending its ambitious project to digitally archive newspapers. The project to scan the archives of the nation’s newspapers and make them available online as a searchable historical record was announced in 2008 with the level of hubris only found in online enterprises.<br /><br />"Our objective is to bring all the world's historical newspaper information online,” said Adam Smith, director of product management at Google, announcing the project. Those lofty aims were echoed by Punit Soni, manager of the newspaper initiative: “As we work with more and more publishers, we'll move closer towards our goal of making those billions of pages of newsprint from around the world searchable, discoverable, and accessible online…."Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we'll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you'll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well.”<br /><br />After scanning about 60 million pages and beginning to make them available as full page shots--because costs of disaggregating and indexing were too high and copyright clearances were difficult to obtain for older material—the company announced that it will quit scanning pages, but continue offering the existing pages available on it Google News Archive site. It said it would not invest any new effort to improve indexing or add tools to better search and manage the archive.<br /><br />The project may have been well-intentioned, but it was not well thought out. It was a free service designed to use the search traffic at the site to raise revenue through advertising Google would put on the site. The scale of the project was enormous and requiring finding, scanning, and indexing thousands of daily and weekly newspapers--many no longer in existence. It would require a long-term commitment of funds, personnel and server capacity to catalogue and scan the material and provide and maintain search functions. The project ultimately incorporated on a fraction of the papers it had hoped to scan, did so spottily in many cases, and its usability was poor because it never mastered the problems of handling so much content. Worse yet, it discovered that history was not a money making business.<br /><br />The exit announcement is not a surprise and is another sign that players the virtual world are stopping deluding themselves that they are replacing the entire world and that the laws of economics and finance to not apply to them.<br /><br />As laudable the preservation of newspaper archives might be, expecting it to be completed and maintained by a commercial firm defied sense and historical experience. For centuries, the most important historical records, books, art have been maintain in governmentally and charitably funded collections because commercial enterprises were either unwilling to bear the costs or to allow the large scale efforts required to preserve, catalogue, index, and make available cultural heritage materials distract them from their business activities.<br /><br />Why would anyone expect Google to act otherwise?<br /><br />As Google increasingly acts as a mature business it will increasingly shed activities that were launched as goodwill gestures because the costs of their operations reduces the company’s financial performance and will diminish the value of its stock compared to other tech firms. Over time it will be harder for the firm to maintain the stance that it is not self-interested and motivated only by the opportunities to improve the lives of the public by providing access to all the world’s information.<br /><br />The tentacles of its operations that have reached out into to many fields will increasingly be pulled back if they do not yield financial results. And fears that Google will rule the world will diminish. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other big players of the digital world all have limits, just as did the handful of firms that once controlled steel, oil, and shipping through cartels. At some point even mammoth, wealthy companies do not have the resources and capabilities to keep expanding endlessly and their performance declines, leading shareholders to rein them in and competitors to find opportunities.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-83186526068027885202011-04-15T09:07:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.919-07:00International Protection for Broadcasts Gaining New MomentumThe proposed international treaty on the protection of broadcasters is inching forward after nearly 10 years of consideration and member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization and other stakeholders are moving toward consensus on the central elements of what it is to do and what is the object of the protection.<br /><br />Much of the rhetoric of stakeholders—particularly pay TV channels and sports rights organisations—has led many to believe it is about protecting their business models and revenue. They have done the proposed treaty a disservice.<br /><br />It is about protecting the value creating activities of broadcasters in content selection, packaging and distribution—something that is not protected by copyrights, but can be protected with a neighboring right. What the treaty is intent on doing is protecting the broadcast—in a signal and derivative of the signal—which embodies the broadcasters value creation activities and is the object of the proposed protection.<br /><br />The result may assist revenue generation and strengthen the business model of rights holders, licensers, and broadcasters, but it does not directly protect those.<br /><br />What it will do is provide a streamlined mechanism for broadcasters to enforce their rights internationally when unauthorised reception, decryption, and retransmission and rebroadcast of their signals are done by other broadcasters and cablecasters. Such practices regularly occur in some countries and sometimes involve the second broadcaster substituting their own advertising and charging fees to obtain the broadcast.<br /><br />The treaty essentially gives broadcasters the right to license other uses of their broadcasts and halt uses they have not licensed, but does not give them rights to the content in the broadcasts that they do not own.<br /><br />The proposed treaty includes some protection of public interests, by permitting national limitations and exceptions for clearly public purposes such as education, service to visually or hearing impaired persons, etc. <br /><br />Some scepticism about the proposals exists in developing nations, because most of the benefits will occur to broadcasters in high income and upper middle income nations and only limited benefits will occur in other states.<br /><br />The thorns on the rose bush, however, involve the fact that many of the nations where egregious reuses of broadcasts have occurred have never well enforced copyright, so one must be highly optimistic to believe that passage of the treaty will solve the problem.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-39730615655443942272011-04-05T01:01:00.000-07:002012-08-08T17:04:59.866-07:00Editing, the Richness of Content, and the Current Limits of Web and Social MediaEditors matter.<br /><br />The March 28-April 4, 2011, edition of the struggling news magazine <em>Newsweek</em>—which I admittedly have not read in years— provides some of the finest articles I have read in many months, illustrates the limits of online and social media, and shows why editors matter.<br /><br />There is great benefit from both edited and unedited media and I don’t believe they have to be seen in dichotomous choices for the future of media. But I believe those who argue they don’t need to edited media doom themselves to narrowness and ignorance.<br /><br />If I relied only on the links I receive daily from colleagues on Facebook, my news alerts for topics of interest, or digital listings of stories, I would miss the most important contribution of edited media—the service editors provide by reviewing and thinking about the world and putting journalists to work to provide a coordinated understanding of the available information. This week’s <em>Newsweek</em> epitomises that reality.<br /><br />Although I often have my attention drawn to information and stories of interest from my social media, the pattern of stories and information sent to me would not have led me to Bill Emmott’s <em>Newsweek</em> story on the impact of disasters on politics, economics, and national psychology or Paul Theroux’s explanation of how Japan’s history has shaped its culture and how the generous global response to the earthquake and tsunami is forcing it to confront the fact that it is not alone and isolated in the face of geographical and physical constraints. <br /><br />Had I relied on to the multiple news websites I peruse weekly, the ways they are presented and the ways that I search for news on them would not have led me to <em>Newsweek</em>’s fascinating story of the nuclear disaster at an Idaho test station in 1961 that may have been the result of a murder-suicide, its account of why a London murder has led to a boycott of Coca-Cola, or its account of why political ignorance in America is higher than that in European countries.<br /><br />My point here is not that we should all be rushing out to subscribe to <em>Newsweek</em> (My apologies to Sydney Harmon, Barry Diller and Tina Brown), but that the functions of editors matter. Having someone look at the world and see ways that it fits together, have editors coordinate and incentive talented writers, and having editors create a collection of stories and information continues to produce value.<br /><br />Those who believe that news, information, and understanding of the world can come through a disaggregated and uncoordinated flow of information and stories, much of which is not prepared by professional writers on a regular basis, miss the entire reason for the success of edited media over the past 300 years.<br /><br />I do not wish to be construed as saying that online and social media do not make enormous contributions to our communications ability, but until they mature to the point they can support regular oversight and thought about the world and compensate professionals for whom investigating and reporting developments is their primary employment, digital media will not be able to replace the contributions of well edited print media. <br /><br />After a decade and a half of digital media it is clear that we are able to move news and information to those platforms, but we are nowhere near the point we can shut off the presses without a great deal of loss of oversight and understanding about the world around our lives.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-24803112725366179432011-01-30T10:36:00.000-08:002012-08-08T17:04:59.834-07:00New Community Radio Opportunities to Increase Provision of Local Services and InformationCommunity radio in the U.S. received a large boost in January when President Obama signed a billed that will permit establishment of an estimated 800 to 1200 new local community radio stations<br /><br />About 800 of the non-commercial community stations are already operating and providing music, health, education, and local information, news, and sports. The stations are run by community organizations, churches, and other civic groups, typically staffed by volunteers, and dependent upon donations from organizations and listeners.<br /><br />Community radio operations tend to provide information about community and civic organizations that are overlooked by commercial broadcasting, focus on social issues in communities, and provide services to minority, ethic and immigrant groups. Programming on community radio is distinctively different from commercial radio and tends to be more local than, and providing alternative content to, that of public radio stations.<br /><br />The stations operate on low power, making them useful for servicing small towns, counties, metropolitan suburbs and neighborhoods.<br /><br />The expansion of spectrum devoted to community radio had been sought for several decades and the Local Community Radio Act signed by the president directs the Federal Communications Commission to make provision for the additional services. Some disputes with commercial channels over spectrum are expected in large metropolitan areas during that process.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794508564448936856.post-43765290874579386852010-12-22T04:09:00.000-08:002012-08-08T17:04:59.869-07:00FCC Moves to Halt Internet Service Provider Content Discrimination and PreferencesThe Federal Communications Commission has moved to keep Internet service providers from limiting or unreasonably discriminating against content provided by competing services<br /><br />The regulations are designed to keep telephone and cable companies that provide phone services from using their Internet services to limit use of Skype and other online telephone services. It is also intended to halt them from making content provided by audio and video service providers they do not own less desirable by limiting downloads from firms such as Netflix or Hulu or providing faster service only for their own content. <br /><br />The rules are designed to maintain a level competitive position on the Internet and to restrict the abilities of companies that dominate access to the Internet from using oligopolistic control of the service points to harm content competitors.<br /><br />The regulations require that services allow their customers equal access to all online content and services, but allow the services some flexibility to management network congestion and spam as long as the rules are clear and not anti-competitive.<br /><br />The rules apply to fixed line services, but do not apply equally to wireless telephony which is becoming the primary means of Internet access though smart phones and electronic tablets and e-reader. Mobile phone providers are permitted to provide preferential access to their services or selected partners, but the rules forbid mobile providers from blocking access to competing sites and services. Mobile services are given more leeway to manage their networks because capacity is more limited than on the Internet.<br /><br />The regulations are an important step in ensuring that major service providers such as Comcast and Verizon are not allowed to use their dominance in service provision to harm other companies and the FCC should be applauded for its efforts. Such companies have in the past shown their willingness to take advantage of their monopoloy power and are not widely noted for their consumer friendliness.<br /><br />Major service providers and Republicans are vowing to fight the move, arguing that the FCC does not have the authority to issue such regulations. If the courts side with them on the issue, Congress should explicitly give it the authority or empower the Federal Trade Commission to ensure competivieneess online.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0