WASHINGTON DC - The Black Friday removal of Jeff Zucker as chief executive of NBC Universal and Jon Klein as president of CNN are the latest examples of corporate executions throughout the media business. These events follow the earlier removal of former ABC News President David Westin, the general decline in cable news ratings, and the ongoing collapse of daily newspapers throughout the nation.
Television news today lives in a Dickensian world. It is the worst of times of declining ratings, escalated cost cutting, collapsing public trust and corporate upheavals. It is the best of times for media entrepreneurs and talents capable of tapping the profound opportunities of an American and global marketplace that hungers for news and information that these gigantic American and global marketplaces find trustworthy and stimulating.
Rather than wallow in the dark side of Dickens in the current media configurations, and wallow in the latest executive firings with more surely to come, let’s consider the dramatic opportunities that are currently untapped:
1. There is a powerful hunger for news and information that is trusted by viewers, which the current media configuration does not offer.
In a recent Gallup poll, television news was trusted by only 22% of adults, and daily newspapers were trusted by only 75% of adults. This means that 75% of more of the potential audience for television and potential subscribers for newspapers do not trust them. This distrust includes every political viewpoint, economic level and cultural background.
Here is another powerful fact: from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, the three major television networks lost more than one million viewers.
As you read this column, whether you are on the talent or corporate side of the business, or a customer of the media, I would ask: do you believe the media treats you with respect? Or do you believe the media treats you as an idiot, more interested in salacious gossip, cheap sensational stories, ridiculous political debates between hacks pushing partisan viewpoints, often reported by those who are so close to their sources they become insiders that so many people distrust?
Obviously, with 75% of the nation distrusting the media that provides news and information, there is great potential for quality television and substantial profits by any enterprise that would significantly increase the trust levels of its current and potential customers.
2. There is a great opportunity for television that reports and discusses the good works of superstar talent. For example, there are countless superstar entertainers who give generously of their time and talents for causes such as wounded troops, of great interests to audiences such as more than 50 million American veterans. There are artists such as Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and so many others who make profound contributions from building houses in New Orleans to fighting hunger on the global stage.
Today these good works are treated in the media with minor feature stories sandwiched between junk food television segments. They should be treated as stories of dramatic human interest and inspiring action that would appeal to tens of millions of their fans, tens of millions of potential new fans, and hundreds of millions and in some cases billions of people in a world wide audience of people who believe in the causes they champion.
Entertainment Tonight is fine, but the audience potential of entertainment news, talk, events and discussion involving superstars that help the nation and the world is enormous for both ratings and profits.
3. Every studio exec and corporate chieftain throughout Hollywood knows the powerful driver of global audiences that is a golden key for the motion picture industry. The exact same opportunity exists for enterprises that offer high quality American and global news, to a gigantic American and global audience of news and information consumers.
Let me be daring. I would propose a one-hour version of the current network news shows aimed at a global audience, modeled after the glory days of CBS Network News that embodied the quality, depth and courage that television news at its best can provide, and once did.
Today there are growing number of news shows, originating from a growing number of nations, of different levels of quality, that are only beginning to tap this market.
If we view our “product” as news for serious people deeply interested in serious news they can trust, on a global level the market for this exceeds any current product in the television business today. And in the American market, execs would be astonished at how ratings would rise for shows that present news that audiences trust.
I have appeared countless times on television, ranging from American cable to global news shows originating abroad, along with writing newspaper columns and appearing on radio. I may well have reached audiences, adding these media together, in almost every nation in the world at one point or another. The lesson I have learned is this:
There is a powerful and gigantic market of viewers, listeners and readers who want to be treated with respect, and who are highly interested in learning “what is really happening”. At the same time, there are many “news providers” who disrespect the audience far more than they understand, which audiences see through and punish with declining ratings and declining subscriptions.
There are formats with powerful potential involving television networks, cable, or satellite both domestic and global that would reach and excite large audience with huge ratings power and enormous appeal to advertisers and sponsors.
4. The collapse of the daily newspapers and weekly magazines are a tragedy for serious consumers of news. The new business model I suggest would involve strategic partnerships between major newspapers and new high quality providers of television news, that would put to work what is a lost generation of serious reporters. This would lower costs for both print and television news, while elevating the quality of content.
I am directly attacking the current business paradigm for media, which currently involves closing international news bureaus and laying off high quality journalists to compensate for lower ratings, cancelled subscriptions and declining profits. It would be far wiser as a business proposition to create new synergies that lower costs, by employing more of the highest quality journalists, leveraged across multiple media platforms.
5. Social network media and the internet can be a destroyer of profit-making business, or a builder of them. The current paradigm is the destroyer. In the current paradigm the big people at the top almost never communicate with the average people in the system, who usually communicate only with each other.
For those interested in box office, ratings and profitability the mega media personalities and superstar performers should increase their direct interaction with the mass of consumers.
On a global scale involving serious global news, one social network interaction by a superstar performer about a cause that performer champions could reach tens of millions of people who become self-marketers of that artist’s work, promoters of that media enterprise’s ratings, and drivers of global box office for a major motion picture release from the superstar who supports the cause.
All of the propositions discussed above would have enormous appeal to multi-billion dollar corporate sponsors and corporate advertisers that would reach audience that are both huge, and directly targeted, which is the marketer’s Nirvana.
Why do I mention Ted Turner in my title?
I believe the world is entering a new media age, similar historically to the birth of radio, the beginnings of network television, the invention of cable television and creation of the internet.
What is different about this age, I believe, is that what matters is not the technocratic characteristics of the actual media format, but the premium and profit potential of re-establishing public and consumer trust, confidence, credibility, and engagement in the media product being offered.
In the same way that Ted Turner may be the single greatest entrepreneur in the history of television, the American and worldwide market of customers now awaits television that respects them, informs them, and inspires them in ways the current media configuration does not.
Until this is recognized the corporate firings will continue, the daily newspapers will continue to disappear, and television ratings will continue to fall.
In other words, Ted Turner was right: treat the customer with respect and the sky is the limit, because in every corner of the globe, the customer is always right.
Statistics: Posted by Prodigy — Thu Sep 30, 2010 10:26 pm
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