I really, really promise that I will not be stuck forever on what might be seen as a crusade about the change in the editorial mix of The Wall Street Journal since Rupert Murdoch took control. I don’t want to become the Ben-one-note on this as Lou Dobbs has become for his anti-immigration tirades.

Still, there is some news on the subject. I have written several times now about how the Journal has been devoting its front page to hot-off-the-press headlines that are essentially the same as what every other daily publishes: “Obama wins primary,” “Cyclone levels Sri Lanka.” This is a form of run-of-the-mill reporting to which the Journal brings little value added and, with earlier deadlines than most local dailies, perhaps less value.

But now comes some hard data—that’s what I like more than impressions—that does indeed confirm a substantial shift in the Journal’s editorial coverage since the change in ownership. The Project for Excellence in Journalism undertook a content analysis of the front page stories in the Journal for the four months before the December 12, 2007 date that News Corp. acquired control of Dow Jones, the parent of the WSJ and the three months following. Its finding was unambiguous:

In the first three months of Murdoch’s stewardship, the Journal’s front page has clearly shifted focus, de-emphasizing business coverage that was the franchise, while placing much more emphasis on domestic politics and devoting more attention to international issues.

The before and after change is most dramatic in several areas, as seen in PEJ’s chart I’ve cribbed here. Political news is up four fold, reflecting the intense coverage of the primaries that in the past election cycles would have received less space (if only because until recently the Journal rarely devoted more than a single front page column to any story). The full report at the Project’s Web site also compares the “new” Journal’s editorial mix with that of The New York Times, which Murdoch is keen compete with. There are still substantial differences, with the Journal devoting more of its front page to foreign topics, business and economics, less to politics.

Jack Shafer, writing at Slate’s Press Box last month, made note of the PEJ data, but chose to focus on his more generalized impression that the Journal may indeed be better under Murdoch because “it was swinging hard again in its traditional wheelhouse to produce great enterprise journalism.” He proceeds in identifying some examples, all, indeed quality reporting in which the Journal has long excelled.

This may be wishful thinking on Jack's part. I hope not. He has certainly identified some fine-- and traditional -- Journal pieces. But I'm speculating that perhaps they stand out because, as Jack notes, the primary season is over, and there had been no devastating earthquakes or cyclones for a few weeks, and the presidential campaign was in pre-convention simmer. Indeed, in the midst of these fine articles was the front page on June 4, as Obama wrapped up the Democrat's nomination. It struck me immediately as I picked up the Journal and The Boston Globe from the driveway that the Journal article was readily interchangeable with the Globe (and other dailies) articles. In my analysis, every day the Journal wastes newsprint with such headlines, photos and copy is a day lost to do the type of journalism Jack is rightly trumpeting.

I’ve mentioned before that I have great respect for Murdoch as a savvy businessman and as a risk taker who has made real contributions to the competitive landscape of the media.. My current critique is that the hot news approach is not a strategic direction that plays on the Journal’s long time strengths. To the contrary, it takes the paper on a path that daily newspapers should be trying to leave behind.

Ok. ‘Nuff said. I’ll leave this behind. If only Lou would move on from his obsession.

The Wall Street Journal's editors again flub an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the fading pack of daily local newspapers. At least the Times used the slightly more accurate "Claims" rather than "Clinches" and uses a marginally less trite photo.The Journal used the same photo as chosen by the Philadelphia Inquirer editors.

It will take the a few circulation reporting periods (March 31 and September 30) to get a feel for whether the Journal's new "look like a conventional daily" strategy is a positive or negative.

Most of what my colleagues and I write about in this space back in some way to the tsunami-scale scale changes overtaking the legacy media and the absence of a roadmap for what they should do. We can only track what seems to work for others, try to prognosticate the future (iffy beyond, say, six months), observe forces and trends at work, cajole and suggest.

There is, in short, much uncertainty surrounding where the business models for media are and should be headed.

One area that legacy media can control and should know something about is content. Newspapers, broadcasters, publishers of all stripes, have absolute control over their content. Newspaper publishers constantly need to ask themselves “What do consumers want when they subscribe or take $.50 (or $1.00) out of their purses/pockets to buy the publication. Broadcasters certainly ask, ‘Why should viewers tune us in?”

But I’m constantly amazed at their lack of insight and therefore the choices they make. And here I’m referring in particular to the broadly defined “news” segment of the media. Research shows that there has been a range of motivations that are involved in getting individuals to buy a newspaper or tune in a news program—or click to a Web site bookmark. One of the top motivating factors is the interest in learning what we do not know. What happened in the world while I slept? Who won the game last night? What is the weather forecast for tomorrow? What did my stocks close at? What does some “expert” think about a new movie or show? Surprise me!

What we don’t need the news media for is to be told what we already know. The Internet has, of course, made it possible for more people to know more of the answers to the above types of questions before they are available in print or even on a regularly scheduled broadcast. Still, there are many things we know even without the Internet. For example, most of use know if it is hot outside. Or wet or windy or cold. We look out the window or open the door. Anyone who drives a car knows the price of gasoline. Anyone who flies knows the airports are crowded and lines at Thanksgiving are long.

So where am I going with this rant? I’m astounded—and hopefully some of you are as well—at how the editors of news media shoot themselves in the foot everyday with the non-compelling nature of their many of their content decisions. For example, most days I turn on “American Morning” on CNN, even before the computer is fired up. And what do I hear, at length, each day lately? A business reporter, Ali Velchi, telling us the price of gasoline. “Pain at the pump” is the not so original refrain. And the usual “B” roll of someone filling up, with the obligatory quote from the woman in the street who is driving less and someone who will give up their “gas guzzler.” And the anchors commiserating over the latest record. And a reiteration of where Lundburg or AAA thinks the price is going in the “peak driving season.” Compelling stuff, no? Maybe the “Today Show” isn’t so lame.

Not long ago I was asked by a small chain of newspapers to spend a few days with their editors in a session to help them understand and strategize for the challenges facing them. They sent me a large stack of their newspapers so I could get a flavor for them. In the sample were issues from several of the papers with a variation of the headline “It’s Hot Out There.” Immediately I created in my head what this would say. By the third paragraph it would quote some gardener about the heat and how he is coping with it. And sure enough, in the first article I read I was both pleased and disappointed with the copy. There, in the third graph, was a quote from Pedro something, with the Generic Landscape Co. “Yeah, it’s hot. So we start really early and quit by two o’clock,” he explained. I mentally patted myself on the back. But there was more disappointment that the article was so very predictable.

However, the larger point is that, with both CNN and these newspapers (and many others that could be included) that these prominent “stories” were not about news. They were what anyone knew.

In this space I have recently been critical of The Wall Street Journal for a new editorial approach that has often reduced prominence of analysis and surprise in favor of featuring in many cases material that most readers would already know: A who-what-where-when accounting of an earthquake. A routine summary of the previous night’s primary results (and, with its early deadline, less timely that what was in the local newspaper). It is telling readers what many, if not most, could be expected to learn from other media they are likely to have seen.

The legacy “news” media cannot materially change the trend toward whatever is coming via technology. But they can slow their demise by concentrating on the content of their products. And they can enhance the position of their digital products as well by providing audiences with the serendipity factor and with a value added quality that is needed to have users buying, tuning or clicking to their products. That has been the not-so-secret sauce behind the strength of The New York Times, USA Today, Fox News and, until recently, The Wall Street Journal. Give people what they don’t know, not the current weather or yesterday’s price of a gallon of petrol.

Sometimes less can be more. This is the implication of my colleague Dorian Benkoil’s thoughts here last week about how newspapers (and other legacy media) might position their Web-based content to optimize revenue over eyeballs. Special interest magazine publishers have long worked this way, charging far higher cost per thousand ad rates for Time Inc's Fortune for example, than for its People, as the former has more attractive demographics for many advertisers than the latter. So a far smaller circulation can bring in as much revenue and perhaps greater profit margins than more circulation and costs. This has been the economics behind many subject-focused cable TV channels as well.

Here’s another way to look at more by subtraction. David Pogue, a New York Times tech columnist who I find entertaining and quite informative, had a column last month about why a product can be a success even with acknowledged flaws. Referring to Apple’s Mac Air he wrote:

…When your laptop has the thickness and feel of a legal pad and starts up with the speed of a PalmPilot, it ceases to be a traditional laptop. It becomes something you whip open and shut for quick lookups, something you check while you're standing in line or at the airline counter, something you can use in places where hauling open a regular laptop (and waiting for it) would just be too much hassle.

It's the same lesson I learned when I reviewed the Flip "camcorder" a couple weeks ago: if you change the shape and concept of something enough, it ceases to be that thing. It becomes a new thing, or a descendant of that earlier thing. But it's no longer the original thing, and you can't judge it on the same yardstick.

Lesson learned: Form—the products attributes—can create the function. Thus an entrepreneur can break out of a well-defined category (camcorder, laptop, cell phone) by changing some key characteristics—weight, time to boot up, capabilities—even a dramatic new price point.

Does this insight provide any guidance for the media industry? Should the local newspaper continue trying to be a general interest publication even when online? Is it already something else, in which case it needs to be evaluated by a different metric (i.e., time spent, return visits) than what has been used in the past (i.e., hits or clicks or gross eyeballs or total page views)? Or, perhaps, should legacy media be creating new “things” based on the old? What is the media equivalent of the Mac Air or Flip camcorder: a product that is recognizable but, by changing—often removing—product attributes is used by consumers (and advertisers in this case) in new ways?

Experiments with short form videos—first popularized from the bottom up thanks to the YouTube platform—have now become mainstream with the traditional video programmers. Viacom purchased short film pioneer Atom Films in 2006. But most attention continues to be on finding outlets for conventional programming, such as NBC Universal/News Corp.’s Hulu.

If I had the answer I’d offer it (though probably not here—a guy’s got to feed his family, or in my case, start paying college tuition). But I think it is an area ripe for brainstorming and another round of informed trial and error.

Ready. Fire. Aim.

Have you heard about the “Freemium” business model? It’s a label offered by James Governor Jared Lukin in a “name-that-model” contest proposed almost exactly two years ago in a post at A VC by Fred Wilson, a partner in a New York venture capital firm.

Wilson looked at many of the more successful Web ventures and observed that what they had in common was a basic service that they offered for free and a step-up premium service that they charged for.

The basic voice over IP service Skype, for example, lets users call anyone anywhere for no cost, so long as both the caller and callee are at broadband-connected computers. However, if you really want to be able to call anyone anywhere—that is, to a land line or cell phone -- there are per minute charges. Want voice mail? Upgrade to Skype Pro.

A wonderful service I use called LogMeIn employs a similar approach. It gives me access to my desktop computer from any other computer, anywhere. A free version lets me see all my directories and files and transfer them to my remote laptop. The upgraded version actually displays the screen of my desktop, with access to any program or file, as though it was on my remote computer.

There are many other examples.

But for the Freemium model to work, Wilson observed there are other characteristics that demarcated the more successful implementations and the others:

• Ideally, they don’t require any downloads or plug ins to start. Lots of exceptions here, but it is a helpful goal.
• Support every browser with any material market share. There is no excuse these days to be FireFox or Safari challenged
• Make sure the service works on various flavors of Windows, OSX, and Linux.

In short, he says, eliminate all barriers to the initial customer acquisition.

But unlike 30 day free trials before having to pay, a true Freemium experience ensures that whatever the customer gets day one for free they are always going to get for free. Nothing is more irritating to a potential customer than a “bait and switch.”

If Freemium is such a great approach, why wasn’t The New York Times’ foray into this model more successful? It gave away a basic service and, with Times Select, offered a premium upgrade.

Part of the answer (there is sometimes but not usually a silver bullet) may be that the model is most likely to succeed when the customer implicitly understands why the paid service has to cost money. Free e-mail accounts that offer greater storage for a fee. Termination cost on other carriers networks in the Skype model is explicit justification. In the case of TimesSelect, it would be obvious to most readers that arbitrary withholding of access to some portions of content was not related to significant costs. It may have made some sense as a “value” play, yet it clearly did not work. “But if your free service is loved and you do a good job articulating the value that comes with the paid service, you can convert to paying users with good results,” concludes Wilson.

The Freemium model was augmented one year later by another venture capitalist, Josh Kopelman. He has labeled his observation “The Penny Gap.” I recall meeting Kopelman when I was teaching at Temple University in Philadelphia. He had started Infonautics Corporation, the predecessor of today's High Beam Research, in the early Internet days. I assume from that he learned some lessons about offering a subscription service that gave users access to a wide range of magazines, journals, reference and newspaper material. (And that he was more successful with a subsequent venture, Half.com, acquired by eBay).

The Penny Gap says in essence that getting a user to go from free to any sort of payment, even a penny, is harder that getting a paying subscriber to pay more. Going from free to $1.00 is a much higher hurdle than from $1 to $2, even though the difference is the same. The Penny Gap is a disconnect with classical economic theory, which would hold that demand increases as the price decreases. As Kopelman illustrated in the accompany figure, getting users to make any financial commitment is the greater hurdle than the amount itself.

What does this say about the content-heavy online ventures of the legacy media business? In large measure it helps explain why they settled for the most part (well, except for The Wall Street Journal) on an advertiser supported Web model. From USA Today to Slate to The New York Times media sites have tried and failed to make a user pay model stick, despite offering some high grade content.

But by dissecting the successful non-media sites that have achieved a substantial user-pay component, could media firms find areas where they can truly find value added to justify a premium? I’m not optimistic. Two years ago I might have offered that a comprehensive ad-free video service could be sold at a premium. Recall CNN tried that with its Pipeline service, providing real time video streams and an archive of telecasts. It met many Freemium characteristics, including a presumption of additional cost for all the storage and bandwidth. Apparently Time Warner determined that more advertising revenue outweighed the subscription dollars. Hulu, the new NBC Universal-News Corporation joint venture, is all free, all the time. It has not made noises about offering paid-for premium content.

The bottom line is that as a generalization the media business may not get over the Penny Gap chasm. For those firms that have been on the electronic side, where advertiser supported has long been the total revenue stream, maintaining that model may be easiest to accept. For that segment of the print media that has been used to drawing at least some of its revenue from consumers, resigning itself to only advertising may be tougher. And perhaps a bit of a blow to its self-esteem.

When News Corp. first announced its intention to bid for Dow Jones, some critics moaned that Rupert Murdoch would impose his political ideology (presumably conservative) at the flagship Wall Street Journal. Jack Shafer at Slate, no knee-jerk Murdoch critic (“I genuinely admire the rotten old bastard”), nonetheless had his early list to be skeptical.

Rather than muck up a successful franchise that has outperformed the dismal newspaper industry metrics in advertising and circulation in recent years, my take at the time was why would he do more than invigorate management?

Well, I was wrong. Although there is no noticeable new slant ideologically, there has been a very visible change in editorial priorities. My own opinion is that they are taking the Journal 180 degree from where it should be.

For me (yes, I know, a sample of one), the attraction of the Journal was the unique front page: Distinctive both in physical layout and in content. It was clearly not my hometown Boston Globe—or your hometown whatever. I need not elaborate for anyone who has been a Journal reader.

While the Journal had moved away from the old six column layout, with most articles running one column down the front page, to a more conventional design with multi-column heads and less copy on page 1, the gist of the content was the same.

Now, many days I pick up the Globe and the Journal outside my door and I need to stare for a second to figure out which is which. Do I really need the Wednesday Journal to tell me about the vote tally from Tuesday’s primaries (and with an earlier deadline, less complete than the Globe). For that matter, what proportion of Journal readers even need the morning paper to inform them of the outcome? They got it from TV last night, from TV this morning, or online anytime.

There was certainly room for improvement in the management of Dow Jones that News Corp. could provide. Fresh thinking can be introduced. As one who has been following the ups and, more lately, downs of the newspaper industry professionally for 35 years, the fresh air being blown across the newsroom of the Journal seems to be a cold wind rather than a crisp breeze.

Prove me wrong Rupert. It’s your money and legacy. But if I’m right, can I get the old Journal back?

We know—or thought we knew—that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are smart fellows. But smart, as in understanding software architecture or how to manage a company or develop products is a different kind of smart than strategic smart. Apparently Messrs Gates and Ballmer don’t have the smart big acquisition gene.

I say this as an outsider. I don’t have access to the crunched numbers and five year outlooks no doubt ginned up by the Microsoft investment bankers. And, to be sure, many business pundits have a similar pat justification, all along the lines that both Microsoft and Yahoo have persistently tried to best Google but failed. “No one can compete with Google on their own anymore,” says Jon Miller the former chairman and chief executive of AOL. “There has to be consolidation among the major players.

Suddenly Microsoft, just a few years ago the bad boy of the computer galaxy, is—what—the white knight? Mark Read, director of strategy for the WPP Group, which owns ad agencies like JWT and Ogilvy & Mather, opined, “It is good for investment. It is good for competition.”

A combined Microsoft and Yahoo, notes The New York Times, would beat Google in Web traffic and come closer in ad revenues. Most importantly, the pair would give Google a greater challenge as it tried to enter display advertising, because Yahoo has the largest share of that market.

But wait a second. What does a merger with Yahoo really do for Microsoft—to the tune of a cool $44 billion? Lets look at some numbers.

Google has grown dramatically, going from zero to $17 billion in revenue. It is highly profitable, a bit (well, $200 million) over $4 billion in 2007. Very impressive. But Microsoft had almost 3.5 times that revenue -- $58 billion—and four times the profit-- $17 billion.

So what does Yahoo bring to the party? Not even $7 billion in revenue and a piddling $660 million in profit. It brings a search engine that’s technically pretty good. But Microsoft already has a comparable piece of technology. Yes, most of its revenue is derived form online advertising, nearly twice that of Microsoft.

And what’s the synergy of Microhoo? (or Yahsoft?). Not much that is obvious. Microsoft forecasts at least $1 billion in annual cost savings for the merged entity, from synergies in areas such as combining engineering talent.

Sure, a merger of this magnitude—pegged to cost savings rather than market opportunities-- would make sense if Microsoft was a struggling enterprise. It's not -- and a 29% profit margin at that. It has $21 billion in cash and short term investments. Assuming it actually realized the savings—so what? Microsoft already has the resources to compete with Google—if it is possible at all.

Then what does a Mircohoo end up with? Despite trying, Microsoft has not come up with a strategy to erode Google’s dominance in search and online advertising. Its share of the search market ended last year at 9.8%, down from 12% in mid-2006. Yahoo does better, but fell from an estimated 28.8% mid-2006 to 22.9% last year.

Now, let’s see. We take Microsoft’s failed strategy and add it to Yahoo’s failed strategy... and the best they can come up with is some savings effect, as the combined entity slides further behind.

I understand that the hope is that the two combined would bulk up to a third of the search market—perhaps in aggregate enough to prime the pump to attract more advertisers. But Yahoo alone had nearly a third of the search business in 2005 and that did not keep it from sliding downhill since then.

The combination of Time Warner with AOL in 2001 has been a disaster. However, it was primarily the outlandish $112 billion price tag, negotiated at the peak of the Internet bubble, that made it ridiculous. The notion of an old time content company wanting to modernize by associating with the new media start-up had some strategic sense, even if the conflicting cultures and stratospheric valuation doomed the combination. I could understand the potential synergies, even if not to the degree that could justify the cost.

I can also understand Microsoft’s necessity to segue from the operating system and packaged software business to a greater reliance on Internet-derived revenue. It knows it needs to modify its current business model. But I can think of better uses of $44 billion to get there. Glad I sold my Microsoft stock last year.

The votes have been cast and the results are in.

I’m referring to the decisive TKO win for Sony’s Blu-Ray high definition DVD format over Toshiba’s HD-DVD format. Warner Bros. Entertainment announced yesterday that starting in May it will release high def DVD’s only in Blu-Ray. Up to now it has been selling them in both versions. Thus, the all Blu-Ray line up is now The Walt Disney Co., Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in addition to Warner. Blockbuster had stated publicly last June that it would henceforth only stock high definition DVD’s in Blu-Ray. That leaves only Paramount and Universal in the HD-DVD camp. Blu-Ray players have been outselling HD-DVD players. But the industry consensus was that most consumers were waiting for a standard to emerge before committing. That time might be now.

There is a certain irony here, in that in the last big format battle royale in the 1980s, between Sony’s Beta video cassette format and JVC’s VHS format, Toshiba was one of the few electronics companies that stayed with the Beta format for many years. Sony pioneered videocassettes with its ¾-inch industrial U-Matic and then revolutionized the consumer industry by using time shifting as the way to solve the chicken and egg dilemma for getting out prerecorded videos. But then it lost the marketing war with JVC and Matsushita. Most engineers agreed that Beta was the superior technology, but VHS was good enough. Sony tried again with 8mm cassettes, but that never got traction as a pre-recorded format.

Indeed, the lessons from the videocassette battle would have suggested that the HD-DVD format should emerge the winner. Though less technologically sophisticated, it is less expensive to manufacture. Beyond the earlier adopters, the mass market tends to favor low price over tech elegance (top example: Mac vs. PC). But that doesn’t seem to matter when it is the content providers who now have a say in the direction of the hardware victor

The apparent win by Sony is also a minor setback for Microsoft, which backed the HD—DVD format with an external player for its XBox. On the other hand, all 2.5 million Sony PlayStation 3 consoles are Blu-Ray ready.

There was great anticipation in the industry over Warner Entertainment’s impending announcement. It was courted heavily by both sides. But with stronger Blu-Ray disc sales in the U.S. and even a greater Blu-Ray preference globally, Warner threw its clout to Sony. Neither the manufacturers nor the studios were benefiting from the consumer uncertainty and, in the case of many studios and retailers, the cost of manufacturing and stocking multiple formats. Everyone was hoping for a winner—though Toshiba wanted its technology to be the one that won.

As word gets out to consumers, look for Blu-Ray players to drop in price as volume ramps up and more titles become available for purchase and rental.

(Photo from Gizmodo)

While my colleague Dorian Benkoil has been writing about entrepreneurial journalism, I’ve been studying a slightly different universe, media entrepreneurs. In collaboration with Anne Hoag at Penn State, we have been seeking to learn whether media entrepreneurs are different than entrepreneurs in general. That is, does one go into the media business motivated by a different set of goals than other sorts of entrepreneurs, say, in restaurants or pharmaceuticals? And, more broadly, what is the state of media entrepreneurship today?

I first discussed this line of research in an entry a few years ago at my Who Owns the Media? Blog. More recently Anne and I have pursued this notions of media entrepreneurship and have made some encouraging findings about the vibrancy of bottom up media. This is, indeed, a phenomenon that was recognized in America's earlest days. In our most recent paper we note that

It was Frenchman Alexis de Toqueville who first observed in the 1830s the role of media entrepreneurship in the United States. In his second volume of Democracy in America, Toqueville identified the media entrepreneur (though not employing that term) as peculiar to American democracy in a passage titled, “On the Literature Industry.” He may well have been the first to recognize the inherent interdependencies among media, capitalism and democracy, noting that democracy creates a mass market for “literature” (Newspapers, books and a few magazines were then the only mass media) because citizens seek to be informed in order to participate in their democracy.

We characterize media entrepreneurship as “the creation and ownership of a small enterprise or organization whose activity adds at least one voice or innovation to the media marketplace. In her initial work, Anne found that in measuring the incidence of media entrepreneurship in comparison to other U.S. industries, media on the whole were at least as entrepreneurial, and often enjoyed greater rates of entrepreneurship.

In the most recent line of our research we undertook extensive interviews with 14 entrepreneurs who started media businesses. Though not any sort of statistical sample, we did strive to locate a diverse group of subjects. About half were involved in traditional media—newspapers, book publishing, cable and film—while the others were in some type of online media venture.

Although the entrepreneurs we interviewed have come to their media ventures by many different routes and are at different stages in life, there are some striking similarities in their motivations and attitudes toward entrepreneurship as well as their process for discovery and exploitation. In brief, they are hard pressed to recognize any particular barriers, regulatory, technological, structural or otherwise. And while they are working to make their ventures profitable, their first thought about being “successful” is often a reference to having an “impact” or having influence in some sphere.

From my point of view the most noteworthy insight was that this impact appears in two distinct forms. Some view running a media enterprise as more than just an entrepreneurial venture. The media’s power to influence, for this group, is a prime motivator for becoming an entrepreneur. Others exploited their media ideas for reasons similar to those of entrepreneurs in general. We refer to the former group as “missionaries” and the latter the “merchants” -- a potentially significant organizing concept for media entrepreneurship.

For example, typical of the of the missionaries are the comments of one interviewee who said that merely running a business, “holds absolutely no appeal to me…When you say that, I think of payroll taxes, balancing a cash register. When you say media, I think creative, influence, reach.” She added that a media business was appealing because “you can help people in the masses. There are very few other ways to do that."

A minority of those we spoke to we determined were “merchants.” In general, they responded that running a business, not necessarily a media business, was the motivating factor. Merchants talked about success and rewards in terms that could apply generically to any enterprise:

“It’s rewarding from a self fulfillment stand point that, hey, here’s a concept that I took….We brought it to the marketplace and made it successful. That’s, you know, part of it. There’s a real sense of fulfillment now the fact that we have people working for us. People depend on us for their livings. We're supporting other families, paying taxes and being good citizens. … There’s a satisfaction that comes from that."

The research supports the notion that prospects for new media players—and hence voices—is strong. Or at least there are many entrepreneurs who perceive great opportunity. Combined with our data that shows rapid growth in the number of media businesses overall, it bodes well for diversity of formats and sources of media-supplied content. Perhaps most encouraging is that these entrepreneurs barely recognize the existence of barriers to entry to the media business.

That newspapers continue to lose advertising market share to the Internet is not a revelation. That newspapers are losing share of local advertising is a reason for concern. According to the latest tally, newspapers accounted for 43.7% of the local online advertising pie of $8.5 billion for the first 10 months of this year. This was down from a 44.1% share of a smaller total in 2004. The online revenue of local TV stations, on the other hand, did not decline so precipitously.

Local advertising traditionally has accounted for about 85% of total revenue for newspapers in larger market, even higher for small market newspapers. Local TV stations receive a far higher proportion of their revenue from spot national advertising, while radio stations have tended to be in between, though in most case closer to newspapers than TV. The primary local competitor for newspapers has historically been directories (e.g., Yellow Pages) and direct mail. Increasingly, cable has been able to siphon off local dollars with the capability to insert advertisements down to the neighborhood level.

What must be most unnerving to newspaper publishers and, to a lesser extent other local media players, is that pure play Web sites now have the largest share of local on-line advertising revenue—43.7% by the reckoning of Borrell Associates.

How can this be? Didn’t the publishers take solace in the fact that their local papers had a built in advantage over the upstarts thanks to their identification with the local market? And that all-critical brand equity?

It is becoming evident that the value of ad placement based on search terms, Zip code or Internet address proves more effective for the local advertiser even if the page viewed does not directly contain information that is congruent with the location of the user. That is, the value of the local newspaper or radio station has been that the advertiser had a high degree of confidence that anyone listening to that station or reading that paper was in their local trading area. But online the advertiser may not only be assured that the ad is placed in view of an individual within their target trading area, but may also have specific demographic or other characteristics desirable for that advertiser. Not to mention the added delight of knowing when an ad may have been seen and responded to in the form of a click or more.

Of course, this is true for the online site of any local medium. Too often, however, it seems that while the publisher’s sales force was working on convincing the paper’s current advertisers to try the online version, the new players had no such blinders. They were marketing to anyone, which often meant new service providers and merchants who had not been print advertisers: smaller in size but far greater in number. A version of the long tail effect. And that is where much of the growth is coming from. It’s not just old advertisers in new bottles.

Is a large circulation newspaper likely to generate more revenue by charging for its online edition or making it free to maximize advertising revenue? Is the online version of a newspaper a complement to the print version—or a substitute? The stakes are high and the answers have been elusive. With few exceptions, since the dawn of the Internet Age, newspapers have been wrestling with whether this new conduit would be its friend or its death.

Of course, we will know in the long run, when some media historian looks back on this time from 20 years hence. But that doesn’t help today’s decision makers. That is why the research of University of Chicago economist Matthew Gentzkow published earlier this year in The American Economic Review is so helpful.

In this highly data driven paper with the typically academic title, “Valuing New Goods in a Model with Complementarity: Online Newspapers,”, Gentzkow blends consumer data from the Washington, DC market with newspaper operating results to address three questions: What is the relationship between print and online versions on 1) the demand for either diversion, 2) on the welfare of consumers, and, crucially, 3) on the impact of charging consumers for the online product?

With 30 pages of assumptions, explanation and calculations, Gentzkow makes a well substantiated finding that, The Washington Post would have been better off charging a modest sum for its online version (on the order of $6.00/month) until about 2004. After that, however, the growth in online advertising expenditures crossed over to affirm that it is significantly more profitable to set a zero price for the online edition when one factors in even a small transaction cost for online payments. He suggests that his findings are robust enough that they would likely apply to other big city newspapers.

Along the way, Gentzkow upends the early assumption that the print and online versions of a newspaper were complements. Applying a more sophisticated demographic model than had been used in the past, which simply looked at newspaper readers and online readers, Gentzkow concludes that the substitution effect is “nonnegligible." He does add that ”it is “small, however, relative to some earlier predictions.” In other words, real but not likely “to threaten the survival of print media,” at least right now.

Gentzkow further quantifies the “consumer welfare benefit” created by having a zero consumer price for online newspapers, which he put at $45 million annually for The Washington Post’s market. For the 2000-2003 period that came at the expense of Washington Post Co. stockholders, as he calculated it lost money by giving away the online edition when it could have made a profit by charging for it. (Among the factors here is that, as substitute products, by charging for online, some print subscribers would have continued with their subscriptions instead of switching to the online offering). Starting in 2004, however, the Post was more profitable with the free online version that it would have been with an online use charge

Having seen considerable discussion about whether The Wall Street Journal would be better off making its online version free, as the The New York Times has done Gentzkow’s approach is another data point (a rather large one at that) to reinforce the advertising supported model, for mass market newspapers, at least. There are numerous instances, however, where a consumer-paid model will still be needed. In the magazine business, for example, advertising revenue for many of the mass audience magazines, such as People or TV Guide, can be 50% or more of total revenue. But there are many niche publications, such as The Nation or Weekly Standard, that are highly dependent on subscriptions for the bulk their revenue. It is likely to be the same for niche online sites.

News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has made news with several talks this week.

Yesterday he declared that "the sky's-the-limit profits from traditional broadcast TV are over….Free-to-air television faces a lot of challenges, just from the sheer fragmentation of the audience.” Overall he characterized broadcast television as a "highly challenged industry in America."

This may actually be on the minds of some of the striking Writers Guild of America members. The Wall Street Journal reported than some of the writers who work for the soap operas are resigning from the union and going back to work. The audiences for the soaps have been sinking for years. “Writers and producers in the genre fear that by the time the strike finishes, their audiences won't return.”

On Monday Murdoch publicly admitted that he expected the online version of The Wall Street Journal will soon be free. News Corp. will likely close the deal to acquire Dow Jones next month. "We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having one million [subscribers], having at least 10 million to 15 million in every corner of the earth, keeping up-to-date minute by minute with all business and economic news from around the world," he told an audience in Australia.

Such comments give some insights in News Corporation's strategy and business model. Clearly, advertising will play a larger role in the business model for online content. On the other hand, he is hedging his bets on advertising from broadcasting. First, he advocates making television productions very high quality, so they can be sold to the global market “and then be brought back to America--or to anywhere in the world, for that matter --and be sold as DVDs.”

So, television becomes more consumer financed, while online becomes the prime advertiser-supported medium. At least in Murdoch’s view. How will this be affected, if at all, should DVD’s be supplanted by online delivery, such as by Netflix or Amazon’s Unbox or iTunes video service? Actually, News Corp has a bet there, with Hulu.com, its ad-supported online video venture with NBC Universal.

News Corp. has developed a “portfolio strategy”: When the crystal ball is cloudy, invest in a range of possibilities. Not all need to be a success. Two or three big ones will do.

Talk about Google entering the mobile phone sector has been rampant of late. It has driven Google’s already stratospheric stock price up an incredible 20% in the past month.

What Google is apparently working on is not the hardware per se, but an open operating system and applications that play to its strengths in search, mapping, YouTube and, of course, targeted advertising. Various accounts has it speaking with Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile in the U.S., possibly others globally.

The first question anyone following this thread would ask is why would any of these players consider opening up their tightly controlled phones? Right now, for example, Verizon customers who want GPS directions pay $10/month or $3.00 daily for data that cost Verizon almost nothing to provide. Other mobile phone data services bring in anywhere from $5 to $45 month. Why would Verizon agree to an open system that would blow open this cash cow?

The answer lies in the same metrics that lead The New York Times to forgo $49 from 220,000 subscribers to its Times Select service. And it is the same calculus that my colleague here Dorian Benkoil (and various commenters) put together for scenarios that might make it more profitable for The Wall Street Journal to give away its online product and forego the $60 million, plus or minus, in subscription revenue. That is, the potential for advertising revenue is greater than the current and projected revenue from the walled cell phone garden.

What are the stakes? In 2006, an estimated $301 million was spent on ads for mobile phone in the U.S. One research firm guesses that should increase to $2.12 billion in 2011. (How can they predict to two decimal places four years from now? Someday I will examine a bunch of these past forecasts and see how they line up with what really happened). But this projection likely assumes that the current cell phone industry model prevails. If a more open network evolved, with advertising dollars available to replace lost subscription revenue, that $2.1 billion would be higher. How much? Ah, there’s the rub.

What I am suggesting here is some credibility to the notion that the carriers, like much of the media industry, might do better from an advertising model than from user revenue for their data services. The most likely carriers to be amenable to a deal with Google would be number three Sprint-Nextel and number four T-Mobile. Word is that the latter may be closest to a deal. But Verizon could want to get in on the act as well to counter AT&T’s excluive with Apple. In any event, Google would likely need to split revenue more generously with the carriers than it does in the media world because the carriers are in a much stronger bargaining position.

If Google does get its foot (or whatever) in the mobile phone world, the impact could be every bit as great as has been its impact in the Web universe. It might force Apple to open up the iPhone even more than it has planned to, as much to accommodate its current partner, AT&T, than out of true belief.

I’m not ready to buy Google stock at $700—but then, I thought it was rich when its IPO priced it at about $85, so don’t take advise on this from me. Still, if they pull this off, $700 may look cheap by 2011.

Andy Serwer, the managing editor of Fortune, wrote in his blog on Monday that “Twenty years from now, the media biz will look completely different.” Yeah. But his reasoning for this went beyond the usual digital transformation.

Serwer foresees “two other equally important seismic events”: the passing of the old guard at the family controlled media companies and the “dismantling of media giants.”

Both these factors could as easily fit into a discussion at my Who Owns the Media? blog. But they also are appropriate for this venue because they address the shape of the future media landscape.

While both of Serwer’s “events” are right on, neither is “seismic” nor events, in the sense that they are ongoing process, not a product of a single incident.

Sumner Redstone's Viacom and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation are as likely to continue under the next generation of ownership much as Newhouse has gone on after the death of its patriarch, S. I. Newhouse or Time Inc. (now Time Warner) after the age of Henry Luce. Sure, there may be differences. But they are not likely to be “seismic.” On the other hand, a new cadre of moguls may in the making,: Can you say Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang, David Filo, Mark Zuckerberg?

Similarly, the disaggregation of “media giants” has been an ongoing phenomenon for many years, for reasons ranging from financial needs to the latest trends in strategy. As one example, there is the recent split between Viacom and CBS. Adam Thierer has kept a “diary” of other media company divestitures.

Nearly 30 years ago, in the first edition of my book Who Owns the Media?, I compiled a table of the dominant media companies, based on the breadth of their media holdings. At the time, the company with the largest holdings across the media industry was Times Mirror Co, best know as publisher of The Los Angeles Times. Since then it sold off its magazines (e.g., Popular Science, Outdoor Life) and its book publishing (e.g., Mathew Bender, New American Library) and eventually sold what remained to the Tribune Co., which itself is in the process of selling itself to a private investor and an employee investment fund.

Another on the other short list of companies that had major positions in more than one medium was the old CBS, which back in the early 1980s, besides its television stations and networks, owned a stable of magazines that included Woman’s Day and Road & Track, and book publisher imprints including Holt Rinehart & Winston. All of that was sold off in pieces before CBS, as part of a revised strategy to focus on its “core” television business, undid the “media conglomerate” strategy that was in vogue in the 1970s and sold itself to Viacom.

On the other hand, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday that he expects 25% of the company’s revenue within 10 years to be generated by advertising-supported products and services. Sounds very media-ish.

So, yes, the media industry will look different in 20 years, just as it has evolved over the past 20 or 30 years. But the key world is “evolve.” This is not seismic. The digital revolution may be an appropriate use of “revolution” in the context of the centuries dominated by print. But we’ve seen digital coming for at least 25 years. The mass market Internet goes back 13 years. And newspapers and broadcast stations are still profitable. There has been and still is time to adjust.

Lots of long term rumbling, but no earthquakes, Andy.

The most e-mailed story at The New York Times’ site today is the one announcing that the Times is terminating its subscription “TimesSelect” service, effective tomorrow.

Calculated from the Times’ press release , TimesSelect had about 227,000 subscribers beyond its print base. This was generating an estimated $10 million annually. By online subscription standards, both are substantial numbers (though dwarfed by The Wall Street Journal’s base of one million online subscribers).

The Times’ release clearly points to the strategic basis for its decision: It could do better than $10 million in advertising by opening up its columnists and archives to a larger audience. No subtlety here: Denise Warren, chief advertising officer expected that “with the removal of the pay wall… Advertisers on the site can expect to see an unprecedented number of Times readers interacting with their brands." American Express is the first “sponsor” of the newly opened site.

TimesSelect was a bit controversial from the start, and not just with consumers. Many of its columnists, who, after all, get both ego satisfaction and presumably greater impact with a bigger audience, were unhappy being sequestered behind the pay wall.

Although the venerable Times yielding to the advertising-over-consumer payment model seems to add further credence to the “information wants to be free” trend, I have gotten wind of a new venture that aims to succeed as a user payment model for content providers where micropayments has failed. I will supply more details when available.

A poll conducted in May by Harris Interactive for INNOVATION International Media Consulting indicates that online news and information will supplant television network news as the leading news source over the next five years. But news from television in general (including from cable networks) should continue to be dominant. It also confirmed continued erosion of the role of newspapers, although by my interpretation of the findings newspapers may be in a position to benefit from the ascendency of online news if they can navigate some tricky shoals.

By the numbers

The poll, covering the U.S., Australia, UK, Spain, Germany, France and Italy, asked about media habits today, expectations about media sources in five years (always an “iffy” kind of question) and about attitudes towards newspapers, such as credibility, importance and image. You can see all the results here. I have focused today on just several pieces of data that I think most useful for publishers.

In the U.S., 39% of adults claimed to get most of their news from television, compared to 24% from newspapers and 18% online. By 2012, 37% respondents projected they still would be relying on television, newspapers down to 19% and online news sources up to 26%.

But the poll does not differentiate between online news that is provided by today’s newspaper publishers and that coming from a non-newspaper Web site. Much to its credit, the INNOVATION poll does follow up with this question:

“When most people think about ‘reading a newspaper’ today, do you think that they include the newspaper’s online news and information websites as part of the definition of reading the newspaper?”

Nearly half—49%-- said that they did not consider a newspaper’s online site as within the definition of “the newspaper.” Another 21%-- a large proportion—were unsure.

This finding raises some strategic uncertainty for newspaper publishers and editors. At this point, many consumers still consider the “newspaper” the physical product. So, for example, at the top of its main Web page it may say “The Philadelphia Inquirer” in the familiar Old English script, but it’s not the "newspaper” for these readers. It’s just online news. So should newspapers be focusing on transferring the newspaper’s brand to the online arena?

I don’t know, based on responses to another question that asks simply,

“Do you personally consider online news from a newspaper site to be as credible as the news printed in the newspaper?”

Two thirds of the adults in the U.S. agreed that credibility was equal to the printed paper, only 14% did not (the rest were undecided). However, this finding is undercut by what the same poll found in measuring the credibility adults place on the newspaper in the first place: On a scale of 0 (no credibility) to 100, the median was 57, a rather so-so vote of confidence. (It bested the publishers in the U.K., where newspapers only had a 50 score, but lagged Germany, where they garnered a median of 67).

Responses to another question also should raise a red flag. Given a list of reasons why the respondents might not read newspapers, 55% agreed that they are “Biased or too narrow of a viewpoint” in their reporting. And, consistent with the previous credibility score, 38% said they are “Not viewed as a credible or trustworthy source of news and information”

Implications for strategy

If the credibility of newspapers in the U.S. is so tepid and objectivity so questioned, then might not publishers be better off distancing their online product from their print products? If online news is viewed as a new or different product, should publishers try to present themselves to the pubic with a new brand? Something like what General Motors did with Saturn: Create its own identify, a fresh platform, a different business model. To some degree that has worked for GM and Saturn.

Another approach, also borrowing from the auto industry, is to create a new, perhaps high end product, as Toyota did successfully with Lexus. Instead of creating a Toyota model with more bells and whistles, it created a separately dealer network for a separate brand (sharing some components under the hood only). Might publishers want to keep their current print and online brands for the mass audience but establish new brands with distinctly new content and a different business model for the high (or low) end?

I’m not necessarily advocating for either one. But looking at this empirical data suggests that there there is a need for fresh thinking, for opportunities to be tested—and perhaps some swamps to be avoided.

[Full disclosure: I have occassionally been a consultant for INNOVATION.]

There have been a number of developments and announcements in recent weeks, which, individually, amount to little more than the now-normal background noise of the media business. But seen collectively, they add further arrows to the growing quiver of ammunition that the media landscape is continuing to sift beneath our feet.

For today, I want to highlight the data and analysis published last week by the media-centric private equity firm, Veronis, Suhlis & Stevenson (VSS) in its latest Communications Industry Forecast, covering through 2011. This has nuggets which, if accurate (this is a forecast) would bring to higher resolution the winners and losers in the media arena. For example, total spending on all communications grew substantially faster than GDP between 2001 and 2006. Furthermore, VSS predicts that communications industry spending will continue to grow faster than the overall economy through 2011, making it the third growing sector of the economy.

That’s some good news. On the other hand, the report finds that, for the first time since 1997, consumers spent less time with media in total last year than in the previous year. VSS believes this decrease, though small in percentage terms, is due to changing consumer behaviors and digital media efficiencies. “The drop in consumer media usage was driven by the continued migration of consumers to digital alternatives for news, information and entertainment, which require less time investment than their traditional media counterparts.” It continues: “Consumers typically watch broadcast or cable television at least 30 minutes per session while they spend as little as five to seven minutes viewing consumer-generated video clips online.”

VSS does not see this decrease as part of a long term trend, expecting consumer media usage to stabilize in 2007 and increase slightly through 2011. However, this would be driven by time spent with out-of-home media and videogames as the only major segments to achieve accelerating growth in this timeframe. Overall consumer time spent with media is forecast to increase at a compound rate of 0.5% from 2006 to 2011, down substantially to the 0.8% in the previous five-year period.

The real headline, however, is this prognostication: “In what would be a watershed moment in communications history, VSS predicts that Internet advertising – including pure-play websites and digital extensions of traditional media – will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium in 2011.”

I assume they mean that advertising in printed newspapers will be supplanted by advertising online—which includes the advertising that newspaper publishers generate from their online sites. Still it would be another stake in the heart of what once the biggest rooster in the barnyard.

But here’s another bombshell: “In addition to shifting their attention to alternative media, consumers are also migrating away from advertising-supported media, such as broadcast TV and newspapers, to consumer-supported platforms, such as cable TV and videogames.” Time spent with consumer-supported media grew at a compound rate of 19.8% from 2001 to 2006, while time spent with ad-supported media declined 6.3% in the period. This is not a measure of revenue but of consumer time spent. But with all the buzz about everyone moving to totally ad supported models (see Rebuilding Media’s latest foray into this space), this finding more than suggests that consumers are willing to part with their discretionary income for the right content or platform.

Another data point is found in a piece by Bobby White in The Wall Street Journal (sub. required). "Across the cable TV industry," writes White, "… independent channels are also turning away from TV to the Internet." Black Family History, The Lime Channel, The Employment and Career Channel, Horror Channel and HorseTV are among those that pulled the plug on their cable affiliation in favor a going Internet only.

“The shift illustrates how the Internet is offering a second chance to certain segments of old media. Web-based TV is now becoming a more viable business route, and Internet video is exploding. Running an online-only video channel, which doesn't require expensive cameras and broadcasting gear, is cheaper than operating a cable TV channel. While starting a new cable channel today takes an initial investment of $100 million to $200 million, a broadband channel needs just $5 million to $10 million to get going, says Boston-based research firm Broadband Directions.”

It’s a constant challenge when in the midst of change to separate trends from simple data points. One needs a series of data points over time that show direction. The Journal article may well be a data point that fits into the trends the VSS study provides. It seems though that enough data points are aggregating to confirm some direction with far reaching strategic implications for and broad array of players in the media industry.

Last week I participated with a small group for an informal half day mini-conference at MIT to revisit the arena of online micropayments. This was a very hot topic in both academia and among some newspaper people 10 years ago. As described by Bill Densmore, one of the pioneers of the movement, micropayments are

“…A system [for the Internet] for tracking, exchanging and settling value (including payments) for information commerce (text, music, game plays, entertainment, advertising views etc.).” Beyond that basic component, the premise of the conference organizers for such a system adds an ideological component: That the system “should be ubiquitous yet never be owned or controlled by either the government or a dominant private, for-profit entity. It needs to be massively distributed and - in some fashion - collaboratively owned.”

The backstory: Among the prognosticators at the start of the online age, the original business model for online information was that the user would pay for content. Why the need for a micropayments in the first place, when there are credit cards and the like? The assumption was that the transaction cost would be prohibitive for payments that might be five or ten cents to read an article. The earliest models, therefore, were monthly subscriptions, such as the first iterations of online versions of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution and the LA Times on the pioneering Prodigy service. Version 1 of USA Today on the Web was for a monthly subscription. Slate started free, then switched to mostly subscription, but went back to free when it became obvious that the revenue from subscribers in the thousands would be less than advertising revenue from readers in the hundreds of thousands or higher. But requiring subscriptions to anything could discourage spontaneous access to a stand alone article from nonaffiliated writers or minor publishers.

As we all know now, the mass audience never bought in to the option that it must pay for most of its news and general information. With a few readily identified exceptions (let’s think—oh, The Wall Street Journal Online comes to mind…), newspapers, magazines and everyone else soon discovered that they could make more money by offering free access and use the many additional eyeballs to sell advertising, initially in the format of banners and similar versions of “display” ads.

This model worked to a point. Still, it was particularly unsuited for the small players, who did not have the wherewithal to sell advertising and , in any event, with monthly hits in the hundred or thousands, could not get the interest of these advertisers.

But the marketplace works in neither strange nor mysterious ways. Aggregators such as Doubleclick soon arose to make it easier to include ads on a site. Later, the major breakthrough was the introduction of the AdSense program by Google. This created the column of text ads that are ubiquitous throughout the Web. The ads that are displayed are, more or less, related to the content of the Web site. AdSense has made it possible for small advertisers to get cost-effective targeted placement and has made it nearly effortless for even the most humble Web site to see some revenue.

This growth of Internet advertising was seen by some participants of the conference as having sidelined the development of any payment or user-identity systems. “Why did micropayments fail?” asked one of the conveners.

However micropayments have not failed-- they just did not evolve in the way that had been foreseen by the early developers. AdSense – and similar programs—have created a form of micropayments funded by a third party-- advertisers. Numerous Blogs and other information sources-- including some from mainstream media-- are earnings modest to substantial sums by way of aggregating many "clicks," frequently at five cents or 25 cents each. This is precisely the micropayments idea-- just from an unanticipated angle.

The objective of the mini-conference was to identify needs and requirements for an Internet information payments infrastructure and consider next steps on how to create the needed.

My own take on this—as I was asked-- was that if there is truly a need, then there are any number of smart entrepreneurs out in the universe who would grab the opportunity and an equally substantial group of venture capitalists looking for ways to invest in something that has not been done, is needed—and can be sold for a profit. This soluton, to be sure, runs into the ideological component among some in the community who hold that such a system cannot well serve content providers who may not be mainstream. I disagree. If the AdSense approach – i.e., free-- cannot generate enough income for this group of content providers, I have my doubts about how many takers they will have at ten cents a crack.

There is also growing evidence that strongly suggests that individuals and groups with something they want to say or show are not necessarily motivated by the money but rather by the opportunity of a forum. I call them missionaries, as opposed to "merchants" who are motivated by the profit motive more than the attraction of having a media platform. Hence the proliferation of Blogs, Podcasts and Web sites--many with sophisticated graphics and substantive content—yet without an obvious business model. This is the world of citizen media makers, about whom I will have more to say one of these days at my Who Owns the Media? Blog.

The Internet has provided a forum for a mind boggling cacophony of opinion, art, information and entertainment. The question for the next conference should be: Has the lack of a user-micropayment system held that back? How would the offerings via the Internet look differently if such a user-micropayment infrastructure was in place?

Back in the early days of consumer online services one of the hot topics for prognosticators was the expectation of “disintermediation.”
In brief, this referred to cutting out middlemen in the supply chain, such as stockbrokers between buyers and sellers of securities. Online services, then the Internet, they predicted, would make transactions more efficient by cutting out unneeded intermediaries.

Although talk about disintermediation has subsided and the predictions of some self proclaimed visionaries have not been fulfilled, the reality is that this phenomenon has in fact been operating and is picking up steam.

It is most clear in many financial transactions. Pre Internet I recall paying about $150 on average to buy or sell a stock. I’d have to call a broker, who would call me back later with the results of the order. And he or she got a hefty commission. Today, services such as eTrade, Fidelity and many others facilitate electronic orders that pass through them to the exchanges. Commissions have fallen to as low as $5 a trade.

eBay is a disintermediation vehicle for many types of transaction. About eight years ago, cleaning out the basement of the house where I was raised, I came across a stash of Playboy magazines dating from the early 1960s and Life magazines from the same era. My first reaction was to check on their value with some used magazine and book stores around. They, of course, would have bought them below the market rate so they could retail them for a profit. But I stumbled across this new eBay thing, listed them and sold them myself at “retail,” bypassing the intermediary. Moreover, I was able to reach a national (at the time) audience, while the local retailer had to base its price on a smaller, local market.

With its original direct to consumer business model, Dell disintermediated computer retailers. Paradoxically, HP has helped rejuvenate that channel and Dell has just this week acknowledged that it will sell through retailers. As I keep reminding my marketing students, the word “some” is a big word. Some people may like going direct, but some people still like to call a broker, go to Blockbuster, buy from Wal-Mart. For now, disintermediation is not an absolute—it’s an alternative.

The process continues. Netflix started the disintermediation of video rental stores—and will itself be bypassed by downloaded videos unless it is successful in becoming “one of them.” Much software is downloaded, not packaged, hence stores like Egghead and CompUSA have died or had to retrench.

Which bring us to the media world. The first high profile threat was Napster, which was the ultimate in disintermediation by allowing individuals to trade music with each other. After some fumbling, the recorded music industry has reached a degree of accommodation with the technology through iTunes and its competitors. Bye-bye Virgin Music Superstores, Tower Records and a host of others.

Newspapers have seen a portion of their high margin classified ads disintermediated by Craigslist and Monster.com. Why pay those high per word rates when you can reach more people, in a searchable format, than in the shrinking newspaper. Advertisers have learned about disintermediation as well. While banner ads have a third party middleman, Google’s AdSense or AdWords is far more efficient: pay only when used.

The legacy television networks are scrambling to prevent disintermediation. Postings of network shows on YouTube and the like were a threat to the networks and their local affiliates and had to be stopped. To one degree or another ABC, Fox NBC and CBS have elected to disintermediate their own local affiliates by allowing viewers to access many network shows online directly from their own Web site. Meanwhile, NBC has engaged in deals to distrubute its programming