Contents, before, where written in an newspaper, recorded or broadcast through the radio or the TV, published on a book, etc. Nowadays, contents continue to be that, but they may be stored and shared digitally. It means, whatever content we had, we just convert it into digits, into binary code, and then we are phisically talking about digits. No matter the language, the topic, or the platform for which they were created, contents are digits.
Because contents are digits, and because the final goal of a content business is to spread contents around the world, there is a clear trend towards standarization: we standarize advertising formats (iab), we use a few winner content publishing formats, like PDF, JPG, etc. We clearly assume that inventing a new format to publish images would be nonsense and totally out of our core business. Making this would out of our focus as media. It does not mean that other businesses have a mission to facilitate and improve imaging and endeavour in improving formats to publish images, but this is just peripherical for a media business and we do not compete with each other in this area.
We sell ideas, and they are supported on digits that carry them. Those digits are not the core to our business but the message they bring. Aditionally, the fact that our media essence could be heterogeneus in the past but we all end up flowing to the same river, converging, put us in a situation similar to all of us going to the same wedding, but in a different car, through the same road, so we are all in an unnecessary bottleneck. All of us bought a car, filled it out with petrol, paid our car insurance, and, because we are all going to the same point in our car, we will arrive later than we would arrive if we had all bought a bus, and it will cost us more money. We are media, not techonlogy business.
At the end of the day, we all try to maximize the number of digits we distribute to human, through devices. Out of romanticism, that is a content business. As content sellers we demand time. Everything is transactional, we give you contents, you give us time.
Then, audience may use any device, any language, any moment, to get to our digits. As long as an audience get to our digits and not our competitors we are wining marketshare.
- we buy time
- we sell ideas
- physically, ideas, no matter the language or the topic, nowadays are digits

With the boom of new technologies, the main worry among media businesses was to develop channels to distribute binary code to final customers and so, everyone thought a responsibility of a content business was to become a techonological organization in order to build up the platforms to make our binary reaching earlier. And this approach was probably right for that moment. Getting into the war of developing channels to transfer statements was similar to entering into the business of growing trees just because books are printed on paper; it could work, it could be perfectly fine as vertical integration but it would be very likely that someone else made better paper and we had to print our contents in his paper. Normally, publishing industry did never controled the paper production industry. So what? The same happens with new technologies, that are our new paper, we do not control it and we will never control it. Media should not pay so much attention to controling technology, but to understanding it and bringing it down to the place it gets something useful for their readers. It is an important tool but not our main business.

We are is still in the business of buying time and transferring statements to an audience, and, in fact, with new techonologies, we will exchange statements with our audience better than ever before. Bringing contents down to common physical elements: digits, opens a clear path for global media integration. Digital convergence would have as a natural outcome a global media convergence. Differentiation would be in the statements communicated while digital integration makes it easier than ever to integrate our channels creating huge sinergyes in contents revenue generation.

If technology is not yet a commodity , it will be soon a commodity , and it will get cheaper. You may get some first mover advantaje, but it’s not a key for sustaining your long term media business up and running.

Conclusion: we got the same product, digits, and global media do not compete in the tools to make digits reach their audience. Global media could digitally merge (at least top media groups) in order to get stronger technology with scale economies and concentrate in differentiation through contents.

CC image by tangent

Update: ITV, BBC in talks to share regional sites

What do you find when you look around at the supermarket? If you look carefully to product tags, you will find Unilever, L’ORÉAL, Procter&Gamble, and a bunch of corporations that virtually control everybrand in every product category in each market around the world. When it comes to media (even some people already worry on Media concentration as a potential problem for democracy, and that would be a topic for another post) we still find a group of more or less isolated smaller corporations at least, by language communities. New Information Systems and Technologies (not just Internet), open ways to integrate projects and cooperate profiting from economies of scale that would still help transforming media businesses and making it sustainable by reducing costs. This may be one of the reasons why, even being spanish, I insist in blogging in English. I really see no point on continuing with local, or regional (defining region as a linguistici community) in media business organizations. We can be local in news, but global in corporations, and, my view is that global multiplatform corporations would be necessary to have stronger media and a more independent journalism around the world.

This is just a brief note to advance my coming posts that will try to develop my point of view on how, as media businesses, we could improve our efficiency to serve a better (and cheaper) product to final customers through global integration:

(i): Digital convergence should lead us to Media (organizations) convergence

(ii) Currently, cross border media integration is under-developed (exception made of new/pure players online)

(iii) Digital convergence has a logical evolution towards integration (softer or harder integration, depends). If not merging, Media should integrate in information systems and, still, traditional media could contribute creating standards that would put them in a situation of privilege.

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.