Tom Purves – Product Management, Fintech & AI

Internet usage isn’t killing TV; in fact, TV watching has hit record levels in the US. So why aren’t broadcasters rolling in fat autumn piles of cash?

“An audience member was confused about how viewership could be up but ad revenue could be significantly reduced; top network execs patiently explained that just having eyeballs wasn’t much good in a major economic downturn.”

And by “TV” you could substitute… newspapers, magazines, print media, radio, social network page views, fiction, stock photography, analyst reports, movies, music, journalism in general. Did I miss any?

Boy it’s a tough millennium for anyone to be in the content creation business.

Like all new media shifts the beginning of time, digial media, you has a flavor. And by flavor I mean side effects both good, bad and unintended.

It’s not new news that we are moving to an attention scarcity economy. These days we are all consuming more media than ever. Nonetheless, attention is a fixed commodity and fundamentally puts a limit on how much content we can meaningfully demand in a given day. But supply of new media has exploded and there is just isn’t enough attention – which is linked to revenue potential – to go around. Sadly, the falling cost of media production and distribution has not been enough to offset. If anything falling costs, and web2.0 make things worse by flooding the media market with a lot of “cheap” content. Not in all cases is this “cheap” content a perfect substitute for what came before.

It’s time for us all to start thinking of new models in a post digital world.

In the meantime, there is some good news dear content creators and media titans.

At least you are not in the car making business.

link: Americans hugely addicted to TV, but money doesn’t follow

photo credit: Jose_armas