Rafat Ali called this video of a panel at the Monaco Media Forum the “video of the year“.
I watched the panel with skepticism and set an extremely high bar for myself to agree that the panel was the best media industry panel of the year. I’ve been to enough media and new media conferences, heard enough people say the same things, that unless I came away with two or three new insights into the present state and future prospects for the media industry, it would be just another conference session.
The skepticism started early. It’s a conversation about the future of media companies and their related business models moderated by Christine Ockrent, CEO of France 24, a government subsidized news channel in France. I don’t believe she wakes up every morning worrying about making more money than she spends each month to survive. Those who run for profit companies have to worry about such things.
One of the panelists, Arianna Huffington, says pay models are a thing of the past. Like she knows?! I don’t know what will emerge in the new media landscape, but I certainly don’t have the hubris to think I know exactly which models will succeed and which will fail. I think there will be room for pay models. And room for free models. Some old media companies will re-emerge with hybrid business models, and some new media companies, such as the Huffington Post, will continue to grow.
One could venture to ask where the Huffington Post will be 10 years from now? I’m always skeptical of people that don’t release revenue numbers but lecture others on how to run successful media businesses. Fast forward to 2020. Will the Huffington Post be an extremely profitable company, generating revenue and year-over-year revenue growth they disclose with pride? I don’t have an opinion. It will just have to play out.
She generally regurgitates the same things we hear at every conference – make your content ubiquitous, allow consumers to consume your content anywhere and everywhere. Free and ad-supported is the way to go.
The other panelist, Mathias Dopfner, CEO of German media giant Axel Springer, was much more interesting. He argues that the Huffington Post, like other new media outlets, quotes other news sources liberally. They are derivative publications, benefiting from the time, money and effort traditional news organizations spend on covering world events and breaking news.
She argues that the Huffington Post provides massive amounts of traffic to the primary news sources they link to. That’s the same argument Google makes. Be happy. We grew off your content and we send traffic back to you.
Christine Ockrent did make some good points, such as, “Bloggers contribute opinions more often than they contribute facts….More and more consumers go for opinion rather than fact.” Fact is the domain of traditional journalism. The current media landscape is littered with opinion. And the public seems to love it. I’m imagining a future dominated by opinion journalism and reality TV.
In short, the panel was a conversation between a guy who runs a media conglomerate with a variety of new and old media businesses and a variety of revenue models (free and ad-supported, pay, subscription) across platforms and a woman who does one thing, is an evangelist / sales person for what she does, doesn’t disclose revenue numbers, and who is more opinionated than the guy who can speak from experience across platforms and business models.
Telling a guy who generates revenue on a scale that makes the Huffington Post’s revenue look like a pimple, “You’re going to recognize that the future is free”, was just Ariana being Ariana.
This guy so abused Ariana. And I loved it.
