Gates says traditional broadcast model "dead"

Ok, it ain't news, but when BillG says it, it is still a tipping point. So in the last couple of weeks we've had the two richest guys in the USA, Buffett and Gates, on record saying traditional newspaper and broadcast businesses are dead.

Gates also pronounced the traditional broadcast model dead, joining an already large chorus. He noted that the broadcast networks are trying to have their cake and eat it, trying to keep affiliates and advertisers happy at the same time they are pushing a la carte programming and feeling the impact of IPTV. "There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable."

While I agree that none of us really know for sure what the models are going to look like ten or even five years from now, one thing should be obvious to anyone who is paying attention -  the old models for the media business aren't going to survive much longer. Some of us have spent 24 hours a day working on developing new models for the last few years and are starting to develop a framework for what I am going to be referring to as  "nanomedia". What is "nanomedia"? It is media that is produced for a niche audience, often on a low cost basis, either for the love of it or for commercial profit and I suspect the vast majority of nanomedia will be produced for the former reason. Nanomedia will mostly be copyright free or produced under a fairly open Creative Commons license. Nanomedia will be play on iPods, portable media devices like PSPs, mobile phones, computers or TVs and will  increasingly start to consume higher and higher percentages of the average person's entertainment time.

If you are part of the old media landscape, it's time to start thinking about the future.

Comments

[Tony]

Have you trademarked nonomedia or bought the domain nanomedia.com?

[Tony]

Hehehe nonomedia.. Rob might like that...silly typos.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

I agree with what you say pretty much but won't there still be markets for Old media no matter the growth of new media/nanomedia? For example, do you think you couple last a week or two on Nanomedia alone? Could be an interesting experiment!

No TV, No Radio, No major lable CD/Music, no Bit torrented TV shows, No Going to the movies, no magazines, no newspapers. (have I missed any forms?)

How about it? Could be a good exercise and one that could generate interest!

Molly

[Duncan]

Damn, nanomedia.com, .net and .org is already registered!
Agree with Molly though, because I believe that a large section of the viewing audience still wants content to be pushed to them...basically they are too lazy to find it, and hence whilst I believe that over the long term (say 10-20 years) old media is dead, it will be a long time coming because this isn't something that everyone is going to wake up once day and embrace, it's going to happen overtime as the systems, and the ability to access nanomedia become easier to use and more passive, for example a program that automatically subscribes you to nanomedia of your interest.

BTW I love the term!

[Cameron Reilly]

yeah I went to register the domains as I was writing the posts and discovered them all gone. Bastards! Anyway....

Duncan/Molly - I think you guys underestimate what's going on here. You underestimate where we are on the change curve. Go re-read Kurzweil. The amount of change we will see in the next 20 years will be roughly equivalent to the change witnessed during the entire 20th century.

Anyway... Buffett agrees with me. Gates agrees with me. You can be as skeptical as you like, but I know where I'm putting MY money.

Molly, wrt your proposition - doesn't sound hard at all. But I did go without the podcasts on my iPod for a few weeks and that nearly drove me insane!

[Phillip Molly Malone]

If its not hard, when do you start and is it a week or a month?
I don't think you could do it (well not unless you lie!). Okay a week you might manage, but not a month.
I would even offer to co-host the podcast review of who you are going!

Molly

[Rob Irwin]

Heh, yeah... and Bill also thinks Tablet PCs are pretty tops even though the market has rejected them wholesale. Why, he's a cultural barometer that guy...

[Craig]

In my mind your nanomedia is simply microcontent. Technorati now has pingerati.net and their kitchen.technorati.com/search up and going...it's only a matter of time before we see more niche aggregators of distributed microcontent and more forms of microformats, everywhere. Won't be the end of traditional media yet though. Most people need others to filter the crap out for them and are willing to pay the premium in some cases, people really are lazy/time deficient/uneducated and until online media and the technology that supports it (eg. ePaper/RSS) is transparent, the real change won't come for a while. On the horizon too may be Google's black fibre network and locally distributed and mirrored data warehouses to shape the new landscape. We'll all be on Google local wireless and having our media streamed through the new mass media giant(s) then.

[Trevor Cook]

Saying things like 'the broadcast model is dead'is just plain silly, and self-serving of course be it Bill Gates or Cameron Reilly, why can't we accept that there are many models. We started off with corner side gossip sessions, then got books, then got newspapers, got radio, got TV, got the Internet. Every format serves a different purpose personally I love them all - and why not?

[Cameron Reilly]

Trev, because history says that the "many models" theory falls apart when a technology discontinuity occurs that alters the balance of power in an industry. Do we still have horses and buggies? Do we still have typewriters? The thing that books, newspapers, radio and TV had in common was that access to the publishing power was limited to those with wealth and they kept the balance of supply (of content) and demand (for entertainment) well in check to maximize the economics of the business. Those barriers no longer exist and so we're about to witness an explosion in human creativity that we probably haven't seen since humans first learned to dip their fingers in blood and paint on the walls of the caves. The question isn't whether or not books, TV and radio are valid forms of content. The question is will the economics of how those industries are currently run be able to survive this explosion?

Gates & Buffett say no. You say yes. Fair enough. I still know which side I'm betting with.

[Trevor Cook]

Are Gates and Buffett now good corporates? Revolutionary free marketeers dtermined to break up rent seeking monopolies?
When it comes to exercising monopolistic power that duo need to defer to no-one.
Cars do the same job as buggies - just better (faster, cleaner, more comfortable). Ditto word processors and typewriters. More incrememtnal than disruptive. BTW we still have pushbikes, trains buses cars and airplanes lots of choices there. The internet does not do the same thing as broadcast TV and cannot replace the broadcast model. The broadcast model is expensive productions for big audiences - the internet doesn't do that by definition. Also the internet infrastructure just can't function if the masses start using it as a replacement for broadcast - the infrastructure is not there and it would be (might be) more expensive to create than broadcast TV.
Also who will run the new world of internet media - ninemsn, yahoo7. Why can't the existing media players do both? Big Brother on 3G - Ten can leverage more cash out of its TV. Am I wrong in thinking the ABC is the biggest distributor of podcasts in Australia? Broadcast TV is already big players online and they have the cash and the audiences to make it work
A more likely scenario is that the big distributors of online audio and video downloads will be existing media and it will work best as a complement to broadcast not as a replacement for it.
Niche and amateur stuff is fine - but I can't see it being much more than a tiny part of the overall media market.
I'm happy to have a different view - time will tell.

[Trevor Cook]

"Warren Buffet made a huge investment in the Washington Post years ago, because, he said, it has a monopoly brand-name franchise that insulates it from competitive pricing pressure" hhmmmmm
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/windfall-profits-taxes/

[Cameron Reilly]

yeah that was 1973 Trev. Lots of things have changed since 1973. Bell bottom trousers are out mate.

[urbaer]

Hmmmm.... ponder if Bill has read IBM's report on it at http://www-1.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/imc/a1023172?cntxt=a1000062.
Conan O'Brien also has a sacary take on it at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7935916/site/newsweek/ :
'Meanwhile, computers will continue to be used more and more to watch digital streaming video, eventually turning them into televisions. With no computers available to solve complex math problems, people will have no choice but to return to the abacus. Within a few months, this ancient device will be abandoned when it's realized that there is no good way to make "abacus porn."'

[Trevor Cook]

bell bottoms are out but strangely the Washington Post is still going great and has a good online presence who would have thought it when 'so much has happened' - bell bottoms are out but many men still wear trousers - its the difference between fad and substance
BTW did you see that over 30 billion viewers (cumulative) will watch the World Cup on TV up by several billion from last time. TV seems to have some continuing relevance surely

[Rob Irwin]

Yup, gotta say I'm with Trevor on this Cam.

I know your constant attacks on MSM are largely based on the fact you're trying to be successful in a competitive space, but honestly, I don't think you've listened to a word I've said about the co-existence of media types since I started posting in this place years ago.

The future is all about that co-existence rather than one method coming out on top.

[Cameron Reilly]

I've listened Rob but I disagree. You've got it backwards. My argument doesn't support my business - I'm in the business because I believe in the argument. And I suspect your belief in co-existence has more to do with where your paycheck is coming from than an objective analysis of the facts.

Yes Trev, TV is still relevant today, thanks to the slow roll-out of broadband around the globe over the last decade which has delayed the penetration of video over the web. If you read what Buffett and Gates are saying carefully (beyond the headlines), they aren't saying that newspapers and TV are dead TODAY, they are saying that their business is in decline.

[Cameron Reilly]

I hasten to add Rob that I think TPN's future would be just as rosy even in a co-existence scenario, so TPN doesn't require my predictions to be true. I just cannot see, for all of their supposed merits, how the economics of the MSM industry as it exists today will long-term survive the white-anting of their audience by nanomedia.

[Rob Irwin]

suspect your belief in co-existence has more to do with where your paycheck is coming from than an objective analysis of the facts.

I wouldn't say so. As I've said before, I'm a content creator. I could be creating that content for MSM or nanomedia so, honestly, I personally feel secure, no matter what happens... or doesn't happen, as the case might be.

[Trevor Cook]

Cameron - 'decline' is an emotive term and if they mean that TV won't have the same proportion of total advertising spend as it once did then that's already true and so tritely self-evident as to be absurd. The same happened to radio when TV came along etc. But decline does not mean disappearance. How do you nanomedia the AFL or the world cup do we all turn up and film the game individually? Why does it seem odd that sometimes a one to many model makes sense? In my view nanomedia only makes sense when it is not commercially viable to do a big budget program - big audiences, big budgets; small audiences, small budgets. There's room for both models. No-brainer, really

[Trevor Cook]

they aren't saying that newspapers and TV are dead TODAY, they are saying that their business is in decline.

Cam excuse me but it seems they are saying the broadcast model is already dead -

TV on the Internet "blows away the broadcast model," Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates told the D: All Things Digital conference this week, predicting that "this is the year all the pieces" will come together and eliminate the "dividing line between TV and the Internet." Asked about the future of the traditional broadcast model, he bluntly pronounced, "It's gone. It was a hack." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060601.TWTEASERADD01/TPStory/Business

idiotic

[Rob Irwin]

Yeah, what planet does Gates live on these days?

[Cameron Reilly]

Trev: yeah it's dead as it "it doesn't have a future" not as in "dead in its tracks". Cmon, don't be so literal. In another way, you could say it is as dead as the packaged software business - but Bill's paycheck this year will still be okay.

Rob - he lives on the planet where he is the richest guy and probably the most successful businessman in history. That planet. You should visit it sometimes. I hear the soup is good.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

So do, when are you starting Molly's Namomedia challenge?
Molly

[Cameron Reilly]

when i figure out why I'd bother?