langreiter.com plain, simple: comment-2009-07-02-1

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comment-2009-07-02-1

CREATED BY slauti • LAST EDITED BY slauti 5409 days AGO

That Nielsen analysis is really smart, revealing and correct in many ways but there is no way it will work for general news. The abstraction of the given example works for business reporting and it will work for niches with a lot of promotional self publishing of professional and privat niche inhabitants. It has already worked for wikipedia. It already does not work for the reviewing of normal consumer goods. It does not work for general news and is already quite dead for high quality television entertainment, a thing that thrived on ad financing a mere 15 years ago. It has gone all pay at least for the base financing of its creation and is download for free on the very fringe. And, what's more, it seems to stay there so far.

The bad thing that could happen, if the last remnants of independant general news (which today are produced and distributed in news agencies, PBSes and a part of the privat media industry) will fail in the next decade which seems pretty likely now, in 3 to 5 years more consensus will fail on the plane where the large military organizations and devices are being controlled. The political and intellectual symptoms of these processes are pretty obvious in many European countries already. American science fiction has been predicting the dissolution of the nation state for 25 years now. It is very unclear if the nation state will go away in a bang like multinational monarchies in 1914 or in a puff like the sovietunion in 1990.

What the traditional media with the help of lobbyists and certain governmental agents now try to do to save their own asses though is thoroughly wrong and will fail in one way or the other but in any case.

What Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Youtube do better than old style news media is bringing the globe together. Old style media held nation states together. Still, new global media might be not dense enough a net. They will not touch many large parts of the global population for some time yet. What might prove worse, is, they will not touch or will even averse many regional or local elites. Today they are thoroughly market driven, so every new competitor is bringing down revenues and more so and worse so, is bringing down profits.

"Market driven" might not be the right expression. A lot of the newer offers and businesses are not profitable. Let's rather say they are driven by consumerism in many ways. This is dangerous, because it tends to make them less and less rational.

A revolution is coming. It has been in the making for 50 years. The old elites do not master productive forces and medial communication any more. Media ecology science (not so many good things there yet) and new economic theories (clearly in better shape already) are badly in need. Acceleration is everywhere. Interesting and a bit scary.

You could look at it this way: When the microchip enabled the computer and software industry to reboot in the 80ies it brought down the old, IBM controlled profit rate from 70% to 30%. The net software industry and Google ist just the spearhead of it, is bringing down the profit rate to a normal level. By some strange convergence this also touches the media industry. Large parts of the media industry already had profit rates of under 7 - 15%. This means that the net is bringing their profit rate down to zero and below. Hence the dramatic decline of the newspaper in the US. In Europe the situation is still a bit different. advertisment agencies have protected the media industry for 10 years now in a rather short sighted scheme. They are not longer able to do so.

There are a lot of details like the one that led to the shortsighted lie of Mr. Schächter about his ZDF giving up 80% of content. This gave Mrs. Merkel a nice argument to calm newspapers and get good press for the next election. That symbol obviously was not enough. VDZ exactly knows that this is part of the show but not where the real music is playing.

The large scale political convergence behind all the momentary coincidences and the coordinated propaganda of the last weeks is, that the tides turn in the US and European continental publishers do not feel that alone and powerless anymore. They are not afraid of a conglomerate of Anglo American politcs tech comps and media conglomerates any longer. Now they are gathering new courage. They want to protect their profits and the nation state where their influence is great. The want a new protectionism alliance under the leadership of France. Against Murdoch style media czars, against the Googles and all the imagined stuff in between. But their analysis and political methodology is all wrong and obsolete.

Zu Google und Nachrichten kann man nur sagen, dass
a) kein einzelner Werber so viel Geld zu den Profi-Internet-Medien schaufelt wie Google. Ich würde dieses Geld trotzdem als Profimedium nicht nehmen, weil es nicht ernst gemeint ist. Die Höhe davon ist aber mehr als gerecht. Ich schätze, Google hilft da sogar nach. Also ist das Gegenteil von dem, was die Medien behaupten, der Fall. Google lebt ganz und gar nicht von ihnen, sondern subventioniert sie. Man muss fragen, warum und wozu.
b) niemand derzeit öffentlich-rechtlicher als Google ist und sein Videoding Youtube, wo alle guten Archivstücke bereits bezahlter Medien dank unermüdlicher Privatpersonen auftauchen und Google die Distribution subventioniert.

Let's see what the future will bring. Come talk to me in 2017.