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Now Hear This: Publishers Use
Broadcasting Models to Widen Content's Appeal |
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6 June 2005 |
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As publishers move to online content as a mainstay of
revenues, a surprising number of them are moving past
standard models of text delivery to delve into models that
borrow both content technologies and management models from
their broadcasting brethren. These experiments are no
longer limited to teens in pursuit of online thrills:
they're rapidly penetrating core news and business content
publishers' operations. It takes more than a title and a
good Web site to attract an audience into a loyal
relationship with a content producer. Audio podcasts,
interactive online "talk shows" and TV properties becoming
Web properties are but a few examples of the merging of
content production disciplines. Reaching audiences through
all of their senses and using all of their media-spawned
sensibilities is an essential consideration for business
and consumer publishers alike. |
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After a
decade of development the Web is finally a mainstay of major
media outlets' channel strategies. Propelled by soaring
online ad revenues, affordable Web publishing and increasingly
sophisticated distribution schemes publishers are able to reach
online audiences in more ways through more channels than ever
before. The big news these days, though, is not that publishers
have finally accepted that electronic distribution is a
must-have for profits but rather that they have embraced its
most advanced forms so quickly. There are still plenty of
magazine and news publishers who are wobbling about on their
first real stabs at using online content as their core product,
but between RSS feeds, streaming media, sophisticated search
tools and web mining technologies many publishers have latched
on to the best tools available to broaden the vision of what
their content-vending roles entail. One of the remarkable
aspects of this transformation is the speed with which
Web-distributed audio and video and broadcast-like models are
becoming key components of online strategies for both consumer
and business publishers. Consider a few recent developments:
- "Podcasting" for business content. In less than a
year "podcasting,"
the sending of audio files via RSS and other simple
syndication transports for invididuals to use on their PCs or
portable audio-paying devices, has gone from a few quirky
experiments to a very serious media embraced by mainstream
publishers. CMP's recent
announcement of a podcast series for its
VARBusiness biweekly, providing 15-30 minutes of content
initially, is but one of a number of prominent mainstream
efforts. With syndication of audio content directly to target
markets so easy to perform in the era of
The New Aggregation, audio gives publishers a way to
provide exclusive and personal contact with subscribers that
will provide a strong tieback to electronic and print
versions of an item.
- Using online programming to build "talk show"
communities and raw coverage. The "real-time" nature of
electronic content delivery used to emphasize the speed with
which huge amounts of content could be transferred from
"point A" to "point B." In today's online world the ability
to slog bites around efficiently lends the medium as much to
conversations and custom broadcasting as it does to bulk data
transfer.
Editor & Publisher recently covered efforts at the
Philadelphia Inquirer to have web pages where journalists
post news and make themselves available for interaction with
readers at scheduled times - an online "talk show" format, if
you will, to build up that interaction as an online content
product rather than emails that pile up in journalists'
inboxes. The Inquirer is also starting to tinker with a
service that delivers news photos that may not necessarily
make it to print directly from the front-line
photojournalists - a professional version of increasingly
popular amateur photos via cell phones and other personal
devices.
- Flipping broadcast models into Web models. E. W.
Scripps has used cable television channels for several years
that are branded to complement their print offerings such as
Fine Living and Home and Garden. With online video quality
improving, this programming is now making its way onto an
all-video Web site,
according to The New York Times. Major news outlets such
as CNN and Reuters have been making their video content
available online for quite some time, but it's been as an
add-on service rather than a core online service. The still
nascent video search facilities of Google and Yahoo!
underscore that online is increasingly a viable channel for
users interested in both personal and professional video
services, even as video makes its way in various specialized
programming formats onto smart cell phones and other portable
devices.
In short, publishers of all kinds, most especially magazine
publishers, are recognizing that online content delivery is not
about the Web or any particular technology as much as it is an
opportunity to reach targeted audiences with far more reach and
penetration through a wider range of channels than found in any
other major medium. But just as many publishers are getting
used to the idea of online content being at the center of their
evolving media strategies they're discovering that it's not
just about getting text to work effectively electronically but
also about looking at audiences through the eyes of every
electronic media model imaginable. Magazines become podcasts
that become drivers to weblogs and print editions, even as
print editions use improved multimedia capabilities from Zinio
and other electronic newsstand products to drive print-oriented
users back into online and offline multimedia. Text gets
treated like radio, radio like weblogs, weblogs like email,
email like Web pages, Web pages like TV, TV like searchable
text. In this environment, there are few "safe" niches for
communicating with a given target audience via a specific
medium. If you are not prepared to have a content creation,
production and distribution strategy for specific users in
specific markets that has the potential to straddle all major
technology and content production models at will - print,
online, broadcast, interactive, conversational, personal - then
your upside for future margins is going to become rather
limited.
In much of this evolving landscape advantages will flow to
database, magazine and news publishers who are willing to adapt
their content to users and enterprises empowered with their own
technologies to collect all of these sources at will and to
build their own content architectures. In the world of B2B
content world many of these developments may seem like window
dressing for more serious pursuits. But multimedia capabilities
within many major enterprises are now very mature and ready to
take on a much wider array of content sources, even as these
enterprises become more adept multimedia producers themselves.
In thinking about ways to make content even more productive for
audiences business content producers need to be thinking more
actively with all of their senses for communicating the value
of content to their business audiences. Today's most powerful
content brands are no longer titles, databases, software or
tools: today's content brands are those that communicate the
best with a chosen audience. Now hear this: it's not just text
and data that will build a successful B2B content brand.
-
John Blossom
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