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Suppose
you have to build a boat. You don't know how
many people it is expected to hold, where it is
supposed to go, nor what will power it. All you
know for certain is that it will be in a race with
other boats to be the fastest and most economical.
What will you do?
You
will certainly have to make some assumptions and
then look around for the best materials for construction
of your boat.
This
is the absurd situation in which modern media companies
find themselves. It is also the underlying factor
driving mergers and acquisitions by such companies
as America On Line and Time Warner Corporation.
Media:
A means for communicating. Will the new media simply
be electronic versions of old media? Almost certainly.
Human beings are limited by their senses in the
ways they can acquire information. Books, magazines,
newspapers, TV, computer and movie screens are merging
to become... what?
AOL-Time
Warner doesn't know either, but they are betting
that they will possess the correct ingredients between
the participating enterprises, to participate in
the "new media," whatever it turns out to be. And
they are scared.
Evidence
of their fear is apparent in the fact that the AOL-TW
Chairman gave his complete assurance of cooperation
for access to their media delivery apparatus. If
they were confident that fiber optic cable would
rule the roost, and not telephony broadband (or
some yet-to-be-invented medium) they would make
no such assurance.
At
a time when small, cost-efficient companies seem
to be the most economical and responsive, large
mega-media corporations cling to the old strategy
of bigger=cheaper=better. AOL-TW hopes they can
provide the right content in the best medium to
a mass market.
They
are assuming a mass market. They are assuming that
advertisement will fuel the new medium. They seem
to discount much evidence to the contrary. AOL-TW
may be a media mastodon--too large to ignore, but
nonetheless, a relic of the past doomed to extinction.
In
the days of the "Big Three" broadcasters, (ABC,
NBC and CBS) smaller networks were locked out of
competition. Now, cable and satellite channels proliferate,
and profit at the expense of the networks. They
deliver specific, or timely, content. They pick
their audience, not according to mass appeal, but
according to specific interest.
Does
the appeal of the Internet have a message for media
mastodons? How about the failure of advertising
on the Internet? It may be time to be "something
for somebody" instead of trying to be "everything
for everybody," and the "only game in town."
Corporate
evolution may dictate that the mouse is favored
over the mastodon, for the same reason nature decided
such a thing around fifty thousand years ago. As
the mastodon grows ever larger, they can't fail
to notice the abundance of mice.
The
"boat" analogy, with which this essay opened, may
turn out to be mouse-sized, after all.
The
major Internet portals, such as Yahoo and Excite
do not seem to be rushing to lock up "content" and
so seem to be making a contrary assumption: individuals
will provide content and don't need to be controlled.
They seem to seek to be a large pond, rather than
a boat at all.
AOL
clearly missed the original implications of the
Internet for the future of computing. Companies
like Yahoo and Excite did not. If I were a betting
person, I would bet against AOL this time. But then,
I'm much more like a mouse than a mastodon.
Copyright
© 2000 Robert Marcom All Rights Reserved
Robert
Marcom is a writer, and the Moderator for Net
Author.
Robert's writing credits include both print
and electronic publications. He resides in Houston,
Texas.
ROBERT
MARCOM
Writer - Researcher - Photographer - Illustrator
*Author:
"A Voyage Through The Cosmos"
(ISBN 1-930430-03-5)
"The
Earth Rocks!"
(ISBN 1-930430-04-3)
*Moderator: Net
Author Writers' Community
*Vice Chairperson: Eguild
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