Future of the Media Industry

Sanjana HattotuwaSenior Researcher, Centre for Policy Alternatives

Ashoka Media Fellow

A short history of media production

Index Librorum Prohibitorum• Censorship has been with us for a long time

• Rabalais, Erasmus, Machiavelli, Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Defoe, Goldsmith, Sterne, Falubert, Balzac, Dumas, Stendhal, Hugo, Zola, Mill, Sartre

• In 1948 still over 4,000 books

• Abolished in 1966

“Free media” needs to be qualified

• Cover prices and subscriptions do not cover costs of content production

• Advertisers have a de facto control over print and electronic media

• Readers of alternative press are not purchasers

• Lack of advertising increases costs, decreases market share, volume, distribution and impact

The “marketplace of ideas”

• The market, left to its own devices, will of itself provide what media consumers want

• Regulation distorts this process

• Deregulation therefore encourages competition and increases individual choice

Big business likes the “marketplace of ideas”

• Rupert Murdoch in 1989,

The "eeing of broadcasting... is very much part of this democratic revolution and an essential step forward into the Information Age with its golden promise. It means "eeing television "om the lie of spectrum scarcity... to cater to mass and minority audiences... placing it in the hands of those who should control it - the people.

The assumptions

• A network of providers and recipients

• Information as a commodity, not a public good

• Private profitability over public accessibility

• Media audiences are consumers, not citizens

The problems

• Existing inequalities go unaddressed (e.g. access and cost of access)

• Media marketplace dominated by big business stifle independent and alternative voices

• High costs of entry

The problems

• Citizens rights to know comes at a price

• Information rich and information poor gap increases

• Minority tastes are often sidelined since competition leads to more of the same (tyranny of the majority)

’57 Channels and Nothin’ On

• Increase in number of channels

• Narrowing range of programming

Contours of the future• New Media and Citizen Journalism will merge with MSM

• Consumers will become producers

• Citizen will become witnesses who report

• Audiences will fragment, broadcast and distribution will be redefined

• MSM on the web will become places not static products.

• News will be a conversation - reported and then responded to.

• Mobiles will be ubiquitous and everyone will be addressable

7 driving forces shaping media industry trends

1. Increasing media consumption

2. Fragmentation

3. Participation

4.Personalisation

5. New revenue models

6.Generational change

7. Broadband availability

Global Trends

Where will revenue come from?

Accenture, 2007

Monetising user generated content

Content consumption

Accenture, 2007

YouTube.com

• 5 bi'ion video streams watched by 91 million viewers in September ’08

• Average duration 2.9 minutes

• 44% of online video on Google / YouTube

• Average of 55 videos a month per user

• In July ’08, Americans watched 11.4 billion videos, a total of 558 million hours

Source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2444

User Generated Content

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What are the media?

Accenture, 2007

Moving away from print and terrestrial to online media

Media consumption

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Newspaper readers (in print)

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How media industry has embraced the internet and

web

France24

Yahoo

CNN iReport

Nowpublic.com

Facebook.com

Twitter.com

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Local / Asian Trends

Mobile broadband growth

• The number of users in Asia subscribing to HSPA will swell from 26.5 million to 53.5 million over the next 12 months.

• Fuelling this trend are soaring demand from both businesses and consumers, coupled with falling prices of mobile broadband services, he said.

Mobile growth in Sri Lanka

0

2.5

5.0

7.5

10.0

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Mobiles (in millions)Fixed lines (in millions)

Lirn

easia

Overall

• 200,000 broadband users

• Several thousand mobile broadband users

• 3 million fixed lines / 8 million mobiles / 11 million SIMs

• Heavy use of SMS

• Most newspapers have websites

• Around 1,000 blogs

• Facebook groups / social networking vibrant

Source: Lirneasia

Citizen journalism (English)

Mobile news

Informants

New witnesses• The web is littered with examples on how SMS helped in the

immediate aftermath of the tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

• “I'm standing on the Ga'e road in Aluthgama and looking at 5 ton trawlers tossed onto the road. Scary shit.”

• “Found 5 of my "iends, 2 dead. Of the 5, 4 are back in Colombo. The last one is stranded because of a broken bridge. Broken his leg. But he's alive.”

• “Made contact. He got swept away but swam ashore. Said he's been burying people a' day.”

• “Just dra(ing them off the beach and di(ing holes with his hands.”

Going where journalists can’t

Put it all together...

Future of Media, 2008

How will new media will shape media industry?

• Emphasis on communicative rights: citizens have a right to produce and access a wide and diverse range of information and views that inform them on the main issues of the day.

• Information treated as a public good

• Freedom of expression not simply the media’s right to publish / produce but the ability and rights to participate in the discussions

Long tail and niches

• Hyper-local, topic specific media now possible

• Niche content attracts consumers over time

• Niche content archives become valuable over time

• E.g. paddy cultivation best practices in Mahaweli C Sector, surf conditions in Arugam Bay, garment sector worker’s mobile blog

Evolution of media ethics• Groundviews vs. The Island (PCC useless)

• The Sri Lankan blogosphere vs. Lakbima (emergence of a strong new media collective)

• MSM journalists will need to recognise blogs are legitimate sources of information - good enough to quote or publish, but not good enough to attribute?

• Bloggers need to leverage the reach and influence of MSM in Sri Lanka

Two challenges to the future of media industry

Convergence | Quad Play

TV

Internet

Telephony

Wireless

Convergence creates censors• Tamilnet.com blocked

• Teleconferencing disallowed

• SMS blocked on independence day

• Mobile telephony shut off in East and North

• Private TV Broadcasting Regulations make ISPs liable for tele-visual content

• Working with MoD?

Future of media industry depends on media literacy

• In 1787 President Jefferson noted,

... and were it le+ to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive these papers, and be capable of reading them.

Truth, half-lies, satire, falsehoods?

Media industry will have to grapple with anonymity | online identities | verifiability | impartiality | legal and moral responsibility | political and social consequences

Thank you

sanjana@cpalanka.org