In this week’s column, a bleak prognosis for big media companies, Nine’s robotic cameras in its new Adelaide set-up, the perils of online publishing, and much more.
Little hope for big media
Swedish customer relationship specialist Ralf Blomqvist delivered a lecture at UniSA’s Hawke Centre this week with the downbeat title, “After the Fall: content, context and co-creation after the decline of print media”.
The PR blurb promised that Blomqvist would outline a way forward for an industry that has “lost touch” with its customers.
Rather, Blomqvist, who has advised a number of Nordic media companies, seemed to be delivering a eulogy for “big media”.
He made the shrewd observation that successful companies are the most difficult to “save” in the modern world of media fragmentation.
“One of the biggest threats we have is that this is an industry that has been successful since way back when and has made a lot of money,” he said. “There are still a number of executives who grew up in the older, profitable world, who have a sort of vested interest in trying to protect the things that once were very good and successful.”
He noted that, in the digital age, “it can go down the drain very rapidly these days”, citing the Nordic company Nokia, which went from the world’s number-one mobile phone company to being virtually extinct in just over three-and-a-half years.
And it wasn’t Apple or the iPhone that destroyed Nokia – “it was Nokia that destroyed Nokia”.
“It was essentially an old-fashioned management structure, very authoritarian leadership where they had one truth – where much of the focus was on delivering short-term results and making sure the next quarterly report looked good.”
One truth? That will be a familiar description of top management for journalists in a certain very large media company.
So what’s the solution?
Well, it’s tricky and requires innovative thinking.
Blomqvist said the old media companies were trying to move readers from paper products to digital, but that wasn’t a sustainable solution.
“Customers are a bit like electricity – they go wherever the resistance is the lowest, so there’s really no point in trying to steer customers from channel to channel. Customers … do whatever is best for them.
“We have to get rid of the idea that there’s an industry that needs to be saved. Customers today are fairly well off – it’s paradise if you’re a newsaholic, as I am. You can choose freely from a number of sources, you pay considerably less than you used to, information is freely available.”
He said most people’s news was “distilled and obtained” from within a person’s social network.
“Essentially my network becomes my news agency and the news companies are parts and players in that network that I build and individualise,” he said.
Media companies must solve customer problems, not media industry problems.
“If industry problems and customer problems conflict, which they partly have done up until now, the customer problems will always win.”
Smashing out rubbish
This was up on The Advertiser website for a surprisingly long time yesterday.
“Helmet hair” might be the least of the writer’s problems…
Nine calls up the robots
A crowd gathered at Channel Nine’s new digs in Hindmarsh Square last night to officially celebrate the opening of the state-of-the-art studio.
Nine flew in celebrities Kerri-Anne Kennerley and Scott Cam to mingle with the locals, and station manager Sean O’Brien provided some interesting detail about the new set-up.
The news studio, for example, now includes robotic cameras that don’t require an operator. In the so-called “fish bowl” studio (because there are windows to the street), the news desk is surrounded by a cluster of the cameras, like benign Daleks.
However, O’Brien stressed, the robotics haven’t meant any job losses.
“Normally when we talk about automation and robotic cameras, people think it’s a cost reduction – and I understand that,” he told the gathering.
“So I’m thrilled it hasn’t meant any job losses at all for our Adelaide business – in fact, we’ve added to the team… And that’s really important for the media industry as a whole, and particularly for Adelaide.”
O’Brien also had a crack at the station’s previous owners, the Wollongong-based WIN network, which offloaded the Adelaide station to the Nine Entertainment Company in 2013.
“For too long this business has been held back through lack of investment by its owners. And I’m thrilled this is no longer the case now that we’re part of the wider Nine Entertainment Company. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on relocating us to the CBD and providing us with the most technically advanced studio and broadcast facility in the country.”
ABC lauds scrapping of local 7.30
It seems rather rude of ABC management to celebrate the ratings “success” of scrapping South Australia’s local edition of 7.30, but they might argue The Australian forced them into it.
Murdoch’s national newspaper loves nothing more than getting stuck into the ABC and, this week, it rolled out the latest in a series of stories claiming that the 7.30 current affairs show had lost viewers since the local Friday night editions were scrapped.
The ABC hit back, posting a statement that “it is disappointing and baffling that the journalist did not seek any comment from the ABC for this story”.
“If he had we could have told him that 7.30’s Friday night metro audience in the period he refers to was in fact unchanged (528,000 as of August 2015 versus 528,000 as of August 2014).
“Far from dropping around the country, a small year-on-year audience decline in Sydney and Melbourne has been offset by strong growth in Adelaide (+16%) and Brisbane (+6%).
“Across the week, 7.30’s five city audience is higher so far this year than in the same period last year (674,000 as of September 2015 versus 669,000 as of September 2014).”
Naughty corner
A bit of light entertainment this week, courtesy of SA Health and ABC 891’s Matt Abraham and David Bevan.
Abraham and Bevan were following up an Advertiser story which claimed that “convoys of slow-moving ambulances will ferry more than 300 volunteer ‘patients’ along North Tce in rehearsals for one of Adelaide’s biggest-ever logistical exercises”.
When the ABC duo put this to the RAH project director, Graeme McKenzie, they were in for a letdown – but what an amusing letdown it was.
McKenzie: Just to correct one item in today’s article is that we’re not actually mock moving a number of patients – it’s all about the computer simulation tool.
Abraham: Oh it’s not actually going to be an actual parade?
McKenzie: No.
Abraham: Oh.
Bevan: Oh.
Abraham: That’s disappointing.
McKenzie: Sorry about that.
Abraham: We’re not all that interested now [laughing]. It’s just a computer program.
McKenzie: Yeah, so..
Bevan: Well that’s a fairly important part of The Advertiser story.
McKenzie: Yeah, so I think, yeah.
Abraham: Okay… Graham McKenzie thank you.
McKenzie: No problem.
The Tiser ran a small piece the following day saying McKenzie had “corrected” himself following the interview and that he admitted a “small number of physical tests may be conducted”.
Because, of course, it’s McKenzie that needs to correct the record…
Top of the class
Back in August, we praised The Saturday Paper’s Martin McKenzie-Murray for his meticulous and disturbing report on the horrendous mistreatment of asylum-seeker women being held in Nauru. This week he was shortlisted for the UN Association of Australia’s Media Peace Awards.
