Frédéric Abella

What is happening? Is the media industry becoming totally mad?

A telephone company has its own TV channel, instead of being only a pipe provider. Newspapers provide extra services and their content on internet instead of publishing everyday news on paper. Nobody knows what is a book anymore. It could include video, music, and even books instead of a simple text and sometimes pictures. A telephone is not a handset to talk with other people. It is a “handtop” to read news or watch movies and sometimes you can even use it to make a call.

Everyone does everything, and we, users, customers, are lost. We are lost because the world we are used to is changing. Not only one single pillar of the old universe is, but all at the same time. And this is happening fast. So fast that some old well-established companies are dying in front of us without even understanding why.

The why is a big black hole.

It has come and it is right now swallowing up every single thing. A new way to link people with a never seen use of text, pictures, sound and video, plus the capacity of real-time interaction. Its name is internet. It is not God, neither Devil. It only a new unseen mind-boggling tool and every one, specially in the media area, tries to use it right because the handbook has not yet been written. Some succeed, others not. Some think they will bite the dust, others they will be kings.

What is this all about?

To get it right, you have to understand this is all and only about connecting one content to one person, sometimes happily millions of persons. This has always be and always will.  We will see this is a story of pipes, distribution capacity, mix of media, and also places. This month we will start with pipes.

step 1 – pipe is not content.

The first step is to stop the confusion between pipe and content, distribution and creation. The Rocky Mountain News died in february 2009 and so is dying the press on paper. Journalism is not. A few journalists have found a possible future. Movie theaters may be dying. Film industry is not and there will be films tomorrow. NBC is quite happy with internet. Music CD industry is close to collapse. Some will always make money with music.

Press, movie theater, CD, and also television, books, radio, DVD and others, are only various ways to distribute or broadcast a content, a song, a movie, a story. They are the pipes. They are not the content.

A content is the creation of one person, of a group of person, of a company. A movie is not made only for a movie theater. A press article is not written only for a newspaper. A song is not written only for a cd. Yes, some movies are made to be seen on a big screen, and it is quite hard to watch them on the tiny screen, even 3 inch large, of a telephone. But if a creation is more adapted to one distribution channel, this is a choice and not a limit.

step 2 – internet is not doing something new.

You think this is new with internet. Because it is now digitalized, you can watch the movie on you TV and on your pc. So it is with M6 replay, a catch-up TV offer. Here is the second step. This is not new. Let’s have a look to the pre-numeric period.

We are back in the 90s. Paul will watch a movie in a movie theater. But Vincent prefers to see the same movie on his television receiver on a TV channel, and Brigitte from a VHS tape. Paul likes the specific services the movie theater offers. A big screen, comfortable chairs, a dark and isolated room. Vincent and Brigitte prefer television at home, because they don’t want to go out and wish to do what they want during the movie.

Paul likes to read a book on paper, in a pocket edition. Vincent, too, but he prefers a hardcover one, and Brigitte doesn’t want to read all at once and likes it by episode in a magazine. In the other way, the every week columns of mister Durand in the Brigitte’s magazine can be compiled in a single book. This book can be edited as a pocket book for Paul or as a beautiful book with a colored hardcover for Vincent. Paul usually listens to a radio programme on a radio. But for a long time, Brigitte likes to buy specific radio shows, compiled on a tape, so she can listen to it on her hi-fi system or in her car. Vincent wants a song on a vinyl record or on a tape, but Paul loves to discover it in a concert. And this concert performance, he can watch it on a TV channel, but also on a video tape. And the sound of this concert is also available on a vinyl record for Vincent.

Each time, it is a creation distributed and commercialized in multiple pipes. Moreover each version or edition of this original creation for a specific pipe (a song on a CD, or in a concert, a novel as a pocket or hardcover book) is a creation by itself. And we are back to beginning. Paul saw a movie in a theater. He can now buy the DVD of the movie. This DVD includes bonus tracks. Those bonus are creations and the DVD itself is a creation. It can be a special edition with a special metal cover, thought by a famous artist, as Vincent likes them.

Those pipes exist because they are convenient for people at a specific moment as a channel between a content and a person. One day they are not anymore and they disappear. Who regrets or even remembers horses and the postal service? We still receive letters and news from family. Who wants to use Semaphore telegraph? It was replaced since 1846 by electric telegraphs and was stopped in 1880. I don’t think Morse experts have a great future, but chat with friends is more than possible. You can regret CVs on paper with handwritten letters. Yes it was beautiful. But it is more convenient to send one by eMail. And the content, your experiences, is exactly the same.

Analogic TV will disappear in France in 2011, totally replaced by numeric. Should the news at 20h be better or worse? They just will be the same, maybe with less viewers. Bad or good, I couldn’t tell, but this happened in the past and will happen tomorrow.

step 3 – internet is not even the first revolution of pipes.

Internet bring today a drastically new kind of pipe. I agree. But yesterday the invention of the mechanical printing press by Gutenberg brought a drastically new pipe between text authors and readers. Here is step 3. This is not the first revolution. I don’t think manuscript-book producers, kings of Paris for the text distribution with the handwritten books understood what was happening and that they appreciated this newness. They lost their influence and their jobs. To talk with modern words, the value chain was a bit modified. So it is with internet.

Next month, we will talk about distribution capacity. The Gutenberg printing press will again be a good example.

Read more:

• A telecom operator defend its exclusivity on a sport TV channel
• A newspaper experiments a new kind of edition.
• A social network dreams to be the future of news.
• Another newspaper offers its articles to anyone.
• A TV channel is becoming a big internet player by offering its programmes on internet.
• The number of people getting news on their mobile phone has doubled in one year.
• A third newspaper decides to stop its paper edition to be only on internet, and mobile.
• An movie site on internet becomes social.
• Someone is wondering what is a book at digital time.
• A new eBook will offer access to news sources, music, emails, books

written by Frédéric Abella.