What Media Want vs What Customers Want

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote my previous post challenging the notion that apps for the iPad and smartphones are somehow signaling the coming end of the open Web (“iPad Dreams and the Delusions of Big Media.”)

But this deluded idea has not gone away. In fact, more wishful journalists keep piling on, declaring the impending doom of the Web with unconvincing displays of regret (to cover the giggles of their schadenfreude).

One of the better such pieces was Michael Hirschorn’s “Closing the Digital Frontier” for The Atlantic.  He offers a thoughtful assessment of the utopian ideology of early Web pioneers, including Stewart Brand’s famously truncated statement that “information wants to be free” (… and expensive).

Yet I still don’t buy Hirschorn’s prediction that the growing power of Apple will make a “rush to apps” irresistible, despite the “lack of uptake” by consumers for paid content.

In an interview with Bob Garfield on On The Media, Hirschorn sets the issue up as a looming digital Cold War between Apple (pushing closed systems) and Google (promoting the open Web).

But the crucial flaw in Hirschorn’s argument was pointed out by the next guest on the show, DailyFinance media columnist Jeff Bercovici:

There are a lot of people who think that all of this talk about how apps are going to be the dominant mode of consumption on tablets and on smart phones are kidding themselves.

All the things that make apps so hugely attractive to media companies–the idea that they can really control the environment, that they can, you know, serve you this sort of richer advertising that’s harder to opt out of–all of those things are exactly the things that make it less attractive to a lot of media consumers.

And that’s the crux of it.  Shifting to closed systems is attractive to media companies, but not to their customers.

In the wide-open, hyper-competitive world of digital media (where an innovative startup will happily steal your audience in a minute), I would put my money on the customers winning.

BY DAVID ROGERS

This was originally posted by David on the DavidRogers.biz blog at: http://www.davidrogers.biz

“There’s Nothing Like a Hanging in the Morning…”

In a talk last year, Vivian Schiller, CEO of NPR, opened with a quote from Samuel Johnson that she believes captures some of the feelings in the journalism and media industry today, “There’s nothing like a hanging in the morning to clear a man’s thoughts.”

With a background in television (CNN & Discovery) and digital media (NYTimes.com), Schiller has a breadth of experience to talk about the uncertain future of media and journalism. In fact some of her insights could be applied to the management of any organization in these changing times.

“At a lot of legacy media companies, there is a tradition from the past — you take months to develop a new idea or program…. If it’s a failure, you’ve taken up so much time to do it. What I learned at the New York Times is to be much more nimble — it’s a test-and-learn philosophy. If something doesn’t work — okay, we tried it, no big deal, get it off the site, move on.“

As the executive who “killed” the TimesSelect and the head of NPR with its memebership donation model, Schiller is also at the forefront of the current debate on establishing micropayments or paywalls for news media sites. It’s no surprise where she stands so far, “My gut is, no, the micropayment system doesn’t make sense; on the other hand, I don’t have a solution for how to save newspapers.”

To hear Vivian Schiller speak at BRITE ’10, register now.