Media convergence: media groups to profit from their mass when going digital

Convergence can refer to previously separate technologies such as voice (and telephony features), data (and productivity applications) and video that now share resources and interact with each other, synergistically creating new efficiencies. (wikipedia)

A typical media group: press, radio, tv, magazines, etc. was producing content for particular “channels”.

Today, we convert audio into text, text into audio, images into animations… so we have different ways of doing the same: statements (thoughts) exchange. We now live in an multiplatform imperative and content is used by consumer in a variety of free ways. Traditional media, when they are online, are just “content” no matter they were before a radio, a tv or a newspaper.

I know journalists used to create content for a given channel and contents were always optimized for just one channel in the past. Today, if we were to optimize content for a given channel, that channel is pretty unclear.

We can perfectly say that content at the end of the day is something material. Digital content is made of numbers, of a binary code, although very complex, stored in some hostings and transmitted through cables or waves. Content is just compressed code that can be transmitted and reproduced in many different ways. It is the final user who decides how he prefers to access contents. Audio, video, text, images, finally contents are a flux of numbers that can be transmitted and read in many different ways.

Technological convergence brings media convergence and so, media groups coming froma legacy of separated channels need a holistic approach in order to maximize synergies with the new information systems. We have sustained previously in this blog that it is necessary to minimize content creation to maximize aggregation, organization, analysis, and many other derivated value creations around contents (either it is coming from inside or outside our organization). Separating a media group into business units just because in the past they used radio, tv, or press to spread their contents does not make sense any more. When coming digital, our approach have to unite powers and competences.

We are allowing content aggregators to aggregate (and profit from that aggregation) while we are not aggregating our own content (!!!). Of course, if we do not give our content that necessary aggregation, someone else will do (and that is blessing for a media group because that way we will be reachable at the end of the day).

Internet is about network economy, about critical mass, about being findable, approachable. In order to maximize the possibilities of being found and to completely exploit our competences, we have to keep a strategic union to transform our content into multiplatform useful resources. More than ever, with new techonologies our size will bring us strength.

For big media groups challenges will come from the necessary flexibility and brand differentiation, but this would be a different topic. Adding up content is adding value and retaining audiences around our networks. More than ever playing in a connected way will make us stronger.