Media Week

I know media fragmentation is an ancient topic by now but a couple of things have happened in the last few weeks that have shed new light on the benefits of fragmentation for me.

When the fragmentation apocalypse was first predicted it was always assumed to be ‘a bad thing’. The ability to reach millions of people simultaneously would be severely curtailed and the power of media channels to influence mass culture was considered to be over.

Nowhere was this more the case than for television. The explosion of channels since the beginning of the multichannel revolution in the early 1990s was the most compelling example of fragmentation, and the consistent fall in the headline ratings figures for the main channels and programmes had been seized on by many digitalistas as the beginning of the end for broadcast television. The fact that their predictions were far wide of the mark can perhaps be explained by the fact that they could only see the downside of fragmentation, whereas (as in many other cases of digital wishful thinking) the unforeseen benefits have become far greater than we could have possibly expected.

Two recent events have given me food for thought, especially in terms of how media channels can use fragmentation to attract viewing from traditionally hard to reach light viewing groups who would normally claim to watch very little ‘traditional’ TV.

The first of these occurred when I had the good fortune to be interviewed by Robert Elms on Radio London about my recently-published book on the future of television[1]. Robert was sceptical of TV’s future, concerned that TV’s ‘golden age’ was well and truly over. He claimed that there weren’t the same array  ‘stand-out’ programmes that you knew the whole nation would be watching and that he often struggled to find something to watch. He then let slip that he had been glued to Eurosport for the previous couple of weeks, watching the slow but dramatic progress of the Giro D’Italia. He had not even considered that to be TV viewing, but the benefits of fragmentation had meant a very light viewer had spent many hours watching TV to follow a passionate interest. How often would somebody like Robert Elms have spent hours and hours in front of a TV set in the pre-fragmentation days?

On the same day I gave that interview, I received an email about the Broadcast Digital Awards for 2013. Among the usual contenders for best specialist channel, in this case BBC Four, History Channel and Discovery sits one of the more niche broadcasters; Horse & Country Television.

Now, as one who assumes point-to-point is something to do with my fingers, I must admit that this channel had largely passed me by. But it has certainly contributed to the fragmentation process; a quarterly audience not far shy of 1 million viewers, with a core audience that is overwhelmingly female (92%), and/or horse lovers (96% ride and 71% own a horse!)

Like Robert Elms – actually very unlike him, which I guess is my point – this particular audience has a passion which fragmentation-era broadcast TV can now satisfy; which has quietly resulted in significantly increased hours of viewing from the most unlikely audiences. It may be the King of 80s Cool or the Barbour’s & Badminton set, but either way, fragmentation – for so long considered a bad word – may actually be bringing in the kinds of audiences who would normally say in research surveys “oh, I never watch the television set”!

Everyone has one.  A drawer of tech – old mobiles, chargers, battery chargers, old cameras, that newer tech has made redundant.

I cannot quite bear to turn mine out, they remind me of good times.

And my drawer is full of Nokia phones, as from the first phone I bought, up until my iPhone, Nokia was the only brand of phone I chose to buy.

I was reminded of my love for Nokia during a talk by a visiting speaker, Mark Selby, a Nokia alumni.  One of the best things about working at Ipsos MORI is the round of visiting speakers that come in and talk to us, a programme instigated a few years ago by Ben Page, our CEO and fortunately for us, one of the best connected people in our industry.  Mark spoke very engagingly about his experiences and how to build brands, loyalty and longevity.

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On a recent aeroplane flight, I looked around the cabin and all I saw were people absorbed in their smartphones and tablets of all shapes and sizes.  There was even the awfully named cross breed device called the phablet.  Well, it is either a phone or it isn’t and, anyway, I think it would be much more fun to call it a tablerone.  The latest National Readership Survey (NRS) estimates that 53% of British adults now use a smartphone and 31% use a tablet, with the latter enjoying an incredible 246% increase in just 12 months. Read More »

The news this morning is that Google is launching a music streaming subscription service called Google Play Music All Access to compete with the likes of Spotify and Microsoft’s Xbox Music. Initially to launch in the US, the Android based service will soon be rolled out in the UK and other countries.

It has been reported that Google have described All Access as “Radio without rules”.

Being an inquisitive sort, I visited the Google Official Blog to try to find out why they felt able to make this claim. The only reference to radio I found was within a description of the service: “You can create a radio station from any song or artist you love…” – which suggests that listening to radio is the equivalent of listening to a playlist on iTunes or, in old money, sticking an album on the turntable.

Given that I work in radio and I’m proud of its uniqueness, I feel I have a right to be defensive when other media infer that they possess the same qualities purely because their offering is based around audio. This sort of lazy thinking – particularly common in the tech world – demonstrates a lack of understanding about what radio is and how it works for listeners.

So please allow me to clarify: Google’s All Access – like Pandora, Spotify, or any other streamed music service – is NOT radio, and it never will be.

Now I’m sure this is all just a simple misunderstanding, so to help tech companies developing similar services in the future, here’s my simple five point checklist to see if you qualify to use the term ‘radio’:

1. Is your service a real-time linear stream of content edited by professionals?
2. Do you serve content other than just music (e.g. travel, traffic, weather)?
3. Are the different content elements linked by a human presenter?
4. Do your listeners ever get to hear from other listeners within the content stream?
5. Can the listener access all of this content with a single flick of a switch?

If you answered yes to the majority of these – well, congratulations on being a radio content provider. From a commercial perspective, you also have the added advantage over streamed music services that your audience is more receptive to commercial messages as a natural component of the real-time linear flow.

If you answered ‘no’ to three or more of these, then I’m afraid you’re just a plain old streamed music service – so please don’t pretend to be anything else!

Disclaimer: this check list is based purely on my personal experience and doesn’t pretend to be comprehensive – if there are any other points you’d like to add I’d love to hear them. Similarly, if you think I’m being unfair on streamed services, please let me know why.

US broadcasters and media traders are starting to realise that the traditional trading relationship between broadcaster and advertiser may need to change. Read More »

We all know the media landscape is changing. The print trees are parting to allow the digital river to flow. But it’s not just the landscape; the people that live there are evolving just as quickly. Consumers are no longer being told how they must absorb media.

They are choosing how they want to and that provides media suppliers with a new challenge. How do you keep up with changing consumer needs, wants and behaviour? Read More »

The distribution of video content is fragmenting at an exponential rate. Cheaper laptops, massive tablet growth, the proliferation of smartphones and the emerging force of connected TVs means that consumers are no longer limited to traditional TV to watch video. Read More »

According to folklore Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said faster horses.” Although it’s never been confirmed if Ford actually spoke these words out loud, this quote is often used by business leaders in speeches about creativity and innovation – Steve Jobs most famously.

Well I’m starting to worry that the video industry is guilty of trying to “breed faster horses”, by chasing proof that video offers incremental reach versus broadcast television. Read More »

As the digital marketing industry has matured, it has been influenced by a combination of factors.  These include: technology innovation, the competitive landscape, increased commoditisation, and new business models inside the industry and its related industries.

One very relevant example of such factors working in combination to change the industry relates to the abundant opportunity that was once available through the search marketing keyword discovery process.  Today this opportunity has been all but totally replaced by the online display ad inventory discovery process and the top of funnel optimisation that it drives. Read More »

We’re in a time of much discussion about platforms; the growth of online, the proliferation of tablets, this year being “the year of the mobile” (and having just reached 40 years, it heartens me greatly that it can be your year when you are in your 40’s after all!) and in amongst this, the decline of print always rears its ugly head. But is that the right term?

Surely what we mean is the decline of paper as newsbrands are thriving on multiple platforms – and by focusing on just the decline of the printed product, these discussions miss the whole picture. In other words these days we should be asking ourselves: “Paper (Print) or Screen – who cares?” Read More »