twitter

    Creatives benefit from Dying Network News

    While perusing Twitter I came across this article and I thought that I should share it. Republished with permission. Please make sure to read and also to follow him on Twitter @ RickDiBiasio. The video is especially amazing...
    Dying network is your creative opportunity by Rick DiBiasio

    How Dying Network News = Your Opportunity

    Do you remember a time when you didn’t buy plane tickets without a Travel Agent, you couldn’t buy stock without a Stockbroker and the big three television networks had a monopoly on television programming? I’ll tell you what, that day wasn’t that long ago!

    Sure there are still travel agents, stockbrokers and television networks, only their jobs have gotten a whole lot harder. Being the only one that has certain information is a very valuable business asset, trying to play that role in the Web 2.0 age is pretty stupid. Knowing a little about the way business is changing is crucial to your survival as a creative in 2009, as I’ve been saying, if your job can be sent to India or done by a computer, you are toast.

    When I was a rookie stockbroker in the eighties, all I had to do was get a prospective client into my office and show them my ADP terminal. It was a black and white screen that quoted stock prices in real time and scrolled the Dow Jones News Wire. Once I proved I had access to information they couldn’t get at home, these people couldn’t wait to become new clients. They left stock buying to their stock broker.

    If I wanted to go to Vail to ski, I called a travel agent who found everything from a car to a flight to a ski resort, not to mention ski rentals and restaurants. She had a computer terminal with connections and a telephone, you left travel up to your travel agent.

    There were only three television channels and they each hired very serious people to tell us what was going on in the world, they controlled the information America got and Walter Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley told us what to worry about and who was famous. They did it at 6:30 every evening, you’d better tune in or you’d miss the information they were doling out. Local news was the same way; did your team win tonight? Better tune in at 11 to find out.

    Old farts like me remember those days, my kids don’t. They use their mobile device to buy a stock, book a trip and find out who won the game; they do it NOW. In fact, just today, the network news reported new ALL TIME lows for CBS and ABC network news, the slide to irrelevancy is near completion.

    Yes there will be successful stock brokers (I am one), good travel agents (just less of them) and network news; but our product will have to change to deal with smaller and more specialized markets. Stockbrokers offer financial planning now, travel agents specialize in cruises (or some other niche) and networks have the ability to tell stories in a way no one else does. Note, none of these things involves having a monopoly on disseminating information.

    So, what’s The Affluent Artist message here? Actual, quite a bit of this is relevant to the creative.

    * Information gets out and people who think they can control it suck. Turn in for news at 11? No thanks, I’ll look on my Blackberry right now. You don’t write for editors or publishers anymore, you don’t paint for gallery owners. You can get your work out to the masses with a You Tube channel, a $19 web cam and a Starbucks connection. You create for your end user, your customer. You use the web to find them.

    * That smaller more specialized market thing? I believe you need a niche, you need to find your potential buyers and design stuff just for them. Think of your creative self as the local handcrafted furniture store, building stuff your customers want, you know your neighbors and what they need. It’s JUST like that, only your customers can be anywhere in the world.

    * The world is begging for more content. Creative people are in big demand right now, if you can tell a story like no one else or design a product no one else can, you have a talent that people are willing to pay for, Web 2.0 allows you to get that work out there in a more efficient and targeted manner.

    I’m pounding away at this business model thing because it is so relevant to the way people buy. Going to open a bicycle shoppe in London? Before you do, through social networking, every bike rider in town should already know who you are and you should know them. Then, selling them bicycles is like shooting fish in a barrel, you know what they want and you can just give it to them.

    I’ve got a lot more to say about this, I’ll keep you posted.





    2 comments:

    AHexperience said...

    It is interesting, how the internet is changing the media. With that being said, I wonder how they'll work out the pay. I'm not saying that people should do it for only the money but investing lots of time and money for a film/short on youtube that pays nothing (or close to it) almost seems unfair, especially with what the server is making. Like I said though, it will be interesting to see how it all turns out. Then again, people we're saying that television would kill radio. Plus, even though news aren't credible (*cough*FOX*cough*), they have a least a little more accountability than an anonymous person who could blog anything as "reliable news".

    Jdarko said...

    I concur. The most important thing right now is to endure. And while I agree that we put our time and effort for a modicum amount of money we have to believe that our talent is worth more. No, the news is not credible, but could you imagine a world without the media?