Every Company Now is a "Media Company"

In the future every company will need to behave more like a media company, argues Larry Kramer, author of "C-Scape." That should strike you as an odd statement, as it implies virtually any company is, in part, a "media company."

But the argument is that "every kind of storytelling, from news stories to family news, from mass entertainment to literature, including every tool we use to describe a product or a shape a relationship between business and customer," now assumes a different shape in an online world where a company's brand and product are shaped online.

Organizations and individuals increasingly are creators and distributors of news and information.

“When marketers create fan pages or communication with prospects and customers, they’re no longer just advertisers, they are publishers of content.

When they create an app or widget, they are software companies. And when they listen to what customers and critics are saying back to them, they are public relations, customer service and even product development.

Several years ago, for example, I began arguing that in a world where most information was online, Google became a publisher. Several years later, I'd go a bit further and argue that in a world where it is easy and relatively inexpensive for any company to produce its own media, there is as much logic to creating media as there is to allowing other firms to create media, assemble audiences and then spend money advertising with those media.

As we began to see several years ago, when small businesses began to divert "advertising" funds to creating better websites, now firms of almost any size, but especially larger firms that sell on a continental or multi-continent basis, it might well make as much sense to create "media" themselves rather than "advertising in other companies' media."

You'd have to have spent more than 25 years in ad-supported media to fully realize what a change that is. Observers used to say that, in a world of inexpensive blogging tools, "anybody can be a publisher." What most seem not to have realized is that the same tools mean every business can be a publisher.

Where today nearly everybody might agree that a business must have a website, someday a significant percentage of larger businesses will simply assume they need to create media themselves, directly aggregating audiences that potentially buy their products.

This is more than a simple matter of showing "industry leadership" or "thought leadership." This will become a matter of directly creating the audiences that in the past would be seen as "lead generation" tools. The older ways will still work. The point is that a "C-Scape" business environment also allows firms to do it a new way, by becoming media themselves. It's a big deal.

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Local Media Disruption: Mobile Could be Key

Not so long ago, small business was at the mercy of newspapers, TV & radio when they wanted to advertise their local businesses.

But that’s increasingly a challenged view, and mobile and online are going to be bigger factors. Local marketing budgets increasingly will be in flux as location-specific offers can be made to users equipped with mobile devices, based on their expressed profiles and interests.

Mobile, with location capabilities, also will offer promotion opportunities in addition to "awareness" functions. Instead of blasting messages indiscriminately, advertisers will be able to target users with greater need for a particular product, at a particular time, at a location. Advertisers increasingly will be able to provide "instant" inducements, such as discount offers, and increasingly pay only for the offers that produce an action.

The old "spray and pray" model will be sorely challenged as such capabilities are more common.

Local Media Disrupted: How TV, Radio and Newspapers Could Be Disrupted

"Content Plus Distribution" Now is King

Media observers always argue about whether "content" or "distribution" is king of the ecosystem, and views tend to swing back and forth over time.

Henry Blodget, editor of Business Insider, just sidesteps the whole argument, arguing that "content plus distribution" is king. To be more specific, right now Google is king, as it has the best balance of distribution and content assets.

New media companies running the gamut from Google to Gawker Media are now collectively worth $289 billion, nearly as much as the total market value, $296 billion, of traditional media companies like Time Warner, Disney, and News Corp. The two groups are “neck and neck,” said Blodget.

But the bulk of that new-media value lies in Google, not ventures like Huffington Post, Sugar Inc., or Gawker, which resemble traditional content-creating publishers. That’s because, Blodget said, content isn’t king: “Content plus distribution is king.

Henry Blodget: New media and old media are “neck and neck” in value | VentureBeat

Netflix Now Worries Studio Execs

You knew it had to happen: senior executives at three of the big six television and movie studios said they were seeking ways to contain Netflix, which now is starting to look like a too-powerful distributor.

The studios will try to delay the DVD release window for Netflix, and try to make access to that content more costly for Netflix, as well.

After the music industry's experience with Apple iTunes, everybody basically expected video and movie content owners to be wary of giving too much power to any of the distributors.

'The problem is that Netflix is not the company we thought it was when we started doing these deals a few years ago. It has changed,' said a studio executive quoted by Reuters.

Cable TV and other distributors likely have almost as much to fear. If Netflix can get rights to enough content, and can get rights that allow relatively quick access to content on a "day and date" basis (close to real time or at the same time as TV networks show content), Netflix becomes a replacement for a cable TV, satellite or telco TV subscription.

Netflix scrambles future of TV and films | Reuters

U.S. Cable Industry Grabs $5 Billion of Small Business Communications Revenue

It wasn't so long ago that one could hear competitive local exchange carrier executives, even accomplished execs, doubt the ability of cable companies to make a dent in the business services market.

Granted, most of those execs were running firms that made a living selling to multi-site enterprises, an area where cable operators remain a bit handicapped.

But $5 billion a year indicates that cable companies have grabbed a foothold in the very-small business segment.

Motorola Will Create 7-Inch and 10-Inch Tablets

Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha says Motorola Mobility will definitely participate in the tablet space, but it will continue to focus the bulk of its efforts on smartphones. The company will release both 7-inch and 10-inch tablets in the near future, and it views both product ranges as being “quite meaningful.”

Motorola will focus on software differentiation with its tablets, targeting the enterprise, international and retail market places.

Where smartphones are concerned, Motorola will continue to focus on top-tier and mid-tier devices — mid-tier devices have sold in greater volume internationally, while top-tier phones found success in the U.S. market.

Jha says Motorola Mobility "will have 4G devices in the marketplace early next year." Jha didn't say "Verizon Wireless" specificially, but most observers think that is what he meant.

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Clearwire to Issue $1.1 Billion in New Debt

Clearwire Communications says it plans to issue new debt of more than $1.1 billion. That's about a fourth of what some analysts think the company will have to raise to complete its national network. The debt issuance does not mean equity investments might not also occur later, as some $3 billion in additional funding might be required, ultimately.

Some of those observers believe the $1.1 billion is enough to get Clearwire through 2011.

Clearwire Corp - News Room