s m a l l s c r e e n s

admin August 15th, 2008

Gosh, I wouldn’t want to be somebody like me at the moment -job seeking in a foreign country in an industry that is Hindenberging.

The global media market has definitely seen better days. According to the Financial Times, UK share prices have halved since May 2007. Belt-tightening inside media companies is a funny thing to watch.

3 portents of a sick media company

The first thing that happens is the head count freeze. This is where they do not create any new positions or grow any existing teams. Note that this is far from the best approach if you want to establish a beach head in emerging media. As the landscape fragments, more people are required.

The second thing that happens is they swap the people running the show. In good times, editorial folk are in charge. They want to spend and innovate and deliver the best possible media product.

In bad times, sales and marketing types are in charge. They cut budgets, bend over for advertisers -always to the detriment of the media product- and refuse to shill for new developments or emerging technology.

The final thing that happens inside belt-tightening media companies is the result of combining the first two things: An increasing workload is shared amongst a diminishing workforce.

Witness this bizarre piece of spin from CNN. They are going to double their US news coverage. Here’s how:

CNN will hire a handful of new employees, while reassigning some current employees to new jobs. The goal is to have a mix of traditional network correspondents and what CNN calls “all-platform journalists” or APJs, who gather news using lightweight kits that include laptops, cameras and editing tools for Internet, as well as on-air programming in all 20 cities.

“Everyone’s a reporter now,” Nancy Lane, senior vice president of newsgathering for CNN/U.S., said in an interview. “Even our viewers.”

So… That’s more work from less people. Unless you count the free work from the members of the public who know how to use their iphones properly.

Symptoms of media sickness

The most obvious one is schizophrenic behaviour. A TV company will refuse to replace office furniture but then go and buy a fledgling web business… Or a newpaper won’t hire video staff but build a set for a cooking show.

Lesser symptoms include hysterical format changes (let’s read the news in Hawaiian shirts!) or the launch of poorly planned ‘new’ products (a book club for a men’s magazine).

Whatever happens, when the illness takes hold, there is a steady erosion in the quality of the core product and its capacity to innovate.

Where the opportunity lies

Great. So this doesn’t sound like good news for you -especially if you are freelancing.

Well… That’s true. but this is what I call the “making lemonade” strategy:

Grab a pen and paper.

Draw up an xy axis graph. (That’s just a big ‘L’.)

The x axis is audience consumption of “non-traditional” media. That’s basically anything that isn’t Dan Rather or the WSJ. ie - your online video series, your blog about cat theatre, and so on.

This line is going to keep going up regardless of the economic climate. media consumption has peaked and eyeballs are fragmenting. The aggregate of all the people watching the non-traditional product is going to be greater than those consuming the traditional stuff.

The Long Tail, basically.

Now… The y axis is media companies’ capacity to compete in this space -represented by R&D budget, staff capacity, management bravery, etc. It’s a combination of capacity and cojones.

This line starts up high but is currently plunging as it heads along the x axis.

You see where this is going? We are sitting right where those two lines converge. Now’s the opportunity to steal a march on some of the big players. Some might call this “kicking while they’re down” but I call it payback for all those repeats of early series Simpsons. (You bastards! It’s twenty years old. It’s not funny!)

How does one do this?

Well, here’s how I’m going to do it:

1. Team up

Thank God for London. I have a group of writer/directors I can play around with again. It’s important to make use of scale here. Check down the right hand column for what I said about getting better friends.

You know if you all started a bunch of blogs at the same time you can help each others’ SEO? It’s called a blog pack and it works for a lot of digital projects/websites -not just blogs.

2. Set Milestones and Objectives

One project per quarter, for instance. Or one video sequence per month.Whatever it is, don’t let this momentum peter off in a haze of unemployment benefits and marijuana smoke. You have a very real opportunity for audience growth here.

3. Communicate ‘properly’

I don’t mean using proper grammar or refraining from calling each other fucktards. I mean start a Google calendar, share it with your creative group, add meetings, shoots, whatever to them.

Have daily/weekly whatever project update emails.

4. Think outside the box

So you’re a screenwriter, eh? Well… What else are you? Check this out. This guy hid tiny little figures around London as a piece of street theatre. He sold merchandise through his (free) blog and now has a book coming out.

Still a screenwriter?

Because the climate is good for writers… For screenwriters it’s about the same as it has always been. Sucky.

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