Penn conference on the future of media
This past Thursday, the Fox Speakers Forum hosted a conference on the future of media. Michael Delli Carpini, Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, moderated the discussion on topics such as media conglomeration and its affect on the future of news, television print and film. The panelists included Mark Coblitz, Senior Vice President of strategic planning for Comcast Corporation, Eli Noam, the director of Columbia University’s Institute for Tele-Information, Tom Wolzien, Senior media analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., and Alan Wurtzel, President of Research and Media Development for NBC.
The panelists openly addressed the changing structure of media. For example, while only 6% of people in the United States have TiVo, the number of people starting to use it or other forms of digital video recording is rising at an incredible rate. While this statistic is particularly attractive to Mark Coblitz, it is discouraging for Alan Wurtzel, who expressed concerns about what TiVO and digital video recording will do for the introduction of new programs. Because people can program what they want to watch and view shows at different times, prime time television no longer has to be viewed at the “prime time”, and new shows have difficulty taking off. In addition, TiVo allows viewers to fast-forward through the commercials, which is bad for the advertisers being in turn also bad for the network.
Control is being transferred from the network to the viewer. Mark Coblitz suggested that the financial structure of the networks is shifting from advertising to paying for the actual mediums of media. Eli Noam disagreed, looking at the market over time at people’s unwillingness to pay for media. He proved this with the case of when The New York Times tried to make viewers pay online for articles. Instead of paying, Internet users turned to free news sources on the Internet or relied on blogs and wikipedia for their news. The New York Times realized this and changed their policy so that viewers only had to pay to read the editorials. Thus this question is posed: Are we supposed to prosecute someone for piracy for trying to read an article by Maureen Dowd without paying fifty cents to do so? This doesn’t seem to make much sense either, which leads to a perplexed and anxious media that will not be sufficiently funded. Eli Noam suggested that perhaps alternative free news sources such as blogs and wikis is the media of future. People might even get better news from these sources than television, where networks are trying to entertain first, and reporting the news is secondary.
Certain aspects of the media are outdated, specifically its structure and slowness to respond to new technology. Media conglomeration makes some sense with the economies of scale increasing every day. Furthermore, some corporations are starting to break down again after unsuccessful self-policing of these hugely mismanaged conglomerations. New technology presents many new challenges as well as opportunities for media corporations but I am hopeful, as were the panelists that it is for the better instead of the worse.
The panelists openly addressed the changing structure of media. For example, while only 6% of people in the United States have TiVo, the number of people starting to use it or other forms of digital video recording is rising at an incredible rate. While this statistic is particularly attractive to Mark Coblitz, it is discouraging for Alan Wurtzel, who expressed concerns about what TiVO and digital video recording will do for the introduction of new programs. Because people can program what they want to watch and view shows at different times, prime time television no longer has to be viewed at the “prime time”, and new shows have difficulty taking off. In addition, TiVo allows viewers to fast-forward through the commercials, which is bad for the advertisers being in turn also bad for the network.
Control is being transferred from the network to the viewer. Mark Coblitz suggested that the financial structure of the networks is shifting from advertising to paying for the actual mediums of media. Eli Noam disagreed, looking at the market over time at people’s unwillingness to pay for media. He proved this with the case of when The New York Times tried to make viewers pay online for articles. Instead of paying, Internet users turned to free news sources on the Internet or relied on blogs and wikipedia for their news. The New York Times realized this and changed their policy so that viewers only had to pay to read the editorials. Thus this question is posed: Are we supposed to prosecute someone for piracy for trying to read an article by Maureen Dowd without paying fifty cents to do so? This doesn’t seem to make much sense either, which leads to a perplexed and anxious media that will not be sufficiently funded. Eli Noam suggested that perhaps alternative free news sources such as blogs and wikis is the media of future. People might even get better news from these sources than television, where networks are trying to entertain first, and reporting the news is secondary.
Certain aspects of the media are outdated, specifically its structure and slowness to respond to new technology. Media conglomeration makes some sense with the economies of scale increasing every day. Furthermore, some corporations are starting to break down again after unsuccessful self-policing of these hugely mismanaged conglomerations. New technology presents many new challenges as well as opportunities for media corporations but I am hopeful, as were the panelists that it is for the better instead of the worse.
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