When Blockbuster first started, no one thought it was a concept which could generate profits.
But with the advent of Net-Flix, On-Demand and streaming video - why should we drive and pay late fees when we don't have to?
As other magazines and newspapers lose market share to online alternatives - what is the next best option for those wishing to reach a broad audience?
All of it's news is shipped to one source and then redistributed to each market across the country.
Maybe this is what Hearst and the The New York Times Company should do.
Maybe they should publish one national edition with space for local stories to be written by local writers in each market being served.
The Times and Hearst would be the national paper with each local affiliate producing it's own local content.
This would reduce costs while increasing local relevance.
Unless old media adapts to the competition from the new media it may become obsolete media.
5 comments:
They all have to go online and since online is free they will all die off. A generation of paper readers are retiring and with it print media.
The only people who will make a lot of money from this online revolution will be your glasses companies as everyone strains to read BS on a Kindle.
So magazines will fail as well?
Newspapers have psyched themselves into thinking they have to compete with online media outlets. When they don't.
If newspapers cover their cities and stop trying to cover everything under the sun then they can survive.
There is no online media outlet that has the resources to cover a city. Especially not major cities like New York or L.A.
Val is correct as far as she goes. However, there is also no sound argument to be made for wasting all the wood and material feedstock that goes into printing and distributing all that paper either.
Local news complexes may have and may maintain certain advantages that they can leverage, however, they will do so in digital rather than print media because of costs.
Finally, driving to rent a movie - where movie rental is the destination activity is as dead as printing yesterday's news on paper. Red Box is thriving, because you still have to drive to pick up your groceries or a Big Mac.
@UBJ - Nope, but one size fits all magazines are going to fail. The print media is changing to what cable is.... a whole bunch of channels narrowly focused on one thing. The niche is the key to the future because general knowledge can be found online in real time. Niche information aka trade magazines are the future.
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