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Content Is Important, Relationships Are More Important
In entertainment, we like to talk about how we make “content”, and technically, that’s what we do. After all, content is a business word, and we’re in show business. The problem is that “content” is a totally non-emotional word, and emotion and connection are what make show business different from every other business.
Right?
Wrong. Emotion and connection are what makes the difference between success and failure in every business. (What motivates people to hire an accountant or stockbroker? Is it because they’re a great golfer? Nope. It’s because of that emotion known as the feeling of security that goes with knowing that somebody who you trust is minding your money.)
Here’s what makes showbiz different: most people don’t identify with their accountant. On the other hand, they tend to identify rather strongly with their favorite entertainers. Said differently, the emotional reaction you get from your financial adviser is focused on you – you feel secure because your money is safe or growing (at least you hope it is). The emotional reaction you get from entertainment is focused on the entertainer – you feel connected to that person, their performance and their, er, content.
Media Convergence Means Bundles Aren't Just For Cable TV Any More
It was interesting seeing this blog post from this prominent venture capitalist who is a partner at this firm. The summary of the post is this: citing Amazon Prime and YouTube Red, he notes that entertainment businesses are creating non-traditional bundles, meaning that, instead of bundles of cable channels (your local cable company/satellite provider), audiovisual content (Netflix, etc.), or music (Spotify, Pandora, etc.) we’re talking about different types of content rolled into one diverse package, er, bundle.
Down the road, he predicts that Amazon and YouTube will add things like games and live sports to the mix. He also believes that others will enter the market, particularly mobile phone carriers. (And actually, Verizon Wireless has already started down that road with Go90.) Let’s connect the rest of those dots with the two words that are driving the new bundling: media convergence.
Mad Scientists Make Major Media Magic
Let’s talk about one of my favorite types of people: mad scientists.
In an era of massive change in entertainment and media, it is the crazed experimenters who will develop successful products, and you don’t have to be one solitary scientist sitting in your underground lair in order to cook up an exotic new compound that bubbles over into something powerful, though that’s often how great new ideas and products are developed.
In fact, you can be a big, presumably cumbersome corporate entity and still play mad scientist. Let’s talk about two of my favorite mad scientists of the moment.
Dear Television: Worry About Profit, Not The Other Guy's Ratings
It’s been amusing to see the meltdown over the alleged outing of Netflix’s closely-guarded audience metrics. As someone who programmed radio stations for over 20 years, living and dying with new ratings data every single week, I can tell you that in our new media world, ratings don’t matter. Not really. (For related reasons that you can figure out on your own, something similar can be said for box office, by the way.) Oh, and the other guy’s ratings really don’t matter.
To borrow from Randy Newman, it’s money that matters. Or, if you prefer Diddy, it’s all about the Benjamins. If you’re a broadcaster, ratings certainly help drive revenue, but in the end, the relationship between ratings and revenue is not, and will never be, linear. The relationship between revenue and profit isn’t linear either.
In that light, ratings are window dressing for the ego.
Lessons Learned Upon Lemmy's Leaving
Things aren’t always what they seem on the surface, and sometimes we lose sight of the things that truly move the emotional needle – whether trends or people – until something dire happens. So it was at the end of 2015 when one Ian Fraser “Lemmy” Kilmister departed to wherever it is that Jimi, Janis, John, Kurt and far too many others are jamming.
When you’re busy thinking about the future of entertainment, don’t just look where the lights are shining brightest. Somewhere in a darkened corner of a legendary bar you’ll find someone – or perhaps several someones – who have a stunningly powerful emotional influence on both artists and fans. Watch this wildly entertaining video, and you’ll want to mock those fans, but rest assured that the kind of passion and commitment that an artist like Lemmy incites inspires a broader swath of audience than you see on the surface. In our digital future, you need that kind of passion in order to thrive. Lemmy Kilmister had just turned 70. If he were instead, say, 20, what kind of following do you think he’d have built both online and off? Here’s guessing it would be off the charts.
The New York Times Delivers News Via Virtual Reality? Yeah, Things Have Changed!
This week’s new leap across media boundaries is an Evel Knievel-sized jump. The New York Times is moving into virtual reality storytelling. I don’t know about you, but I’m both floored and not the least bit surprised.
For a while, I’ve been talking about how the walls dividing the three traditional types of media – audiovisual (television, film), audio only (radio, music, audiobooks), and print – are collapsing. It’s an inevitable part of The Jetsons Future, where all content is delivered via broadband, rather than broadcast or print. With that, the words of Marshall McLuhan come into play: the medium is the message. In other words, when you deliver content through an entirely new means, the content itself must inexorably change.
One of the leading changes is media convergence, where audiovisual, audio-only, and print become one.
The Great Ad Blocking Freakout Of '15
On the off chance you like your payoff up front, here it is: ads are exactly like every other form of content. When your audience loves the content, all is ducky. When they don’t, they avoid that content like the plague.
The message in the Great Ad Blocking Freakout of ’15 is so obvious it’s painful. Here it is – are you ready? You can no longer force people to consume content how you want, where you want or when you want! Here’s another one: Recognize that the advertising content you make has to be just as good – and just as relevant – as the place where your ads are running.
Life (And Entertainment) Lessons Courtesy Of Yogi Berra
We can learn a lot from a brilliant entertainer who just left us. Quoth Casey Stengel: “Mr. Berra is a very strange fellow of remarkable abilities.” Does that sound like every great entertainer you know, or what? To paraphrase Yogi talking about a Steve McQueen movie he’d just seen, The Ol’ Perfessor must have said that one before he died.
Sports is entertainment, and athletes are entertainers. What made Yogi Berra so much fun was that he knew this instinctively, and he made his personal brand last the entirety of his life by being a very strange fellow with the remarkable ability to entertain with words. And here’s the crazy thing about his words: you remember them all the more because (1) they were fun to hear, but (2) no matter how he said it, you knew exactly what he meant by it.
Like A Salmon Swimming Upstream, I'm Uncutting The Cable Cord (Temporarily)
In a world where cord-cutting and cord-nevering are the new normal, what should you be thinking about doing right now?
If I were a creator, I wouldn’t be looking to make unique and excellent content. I’d be looking to make content that connects on such a powerful emotional level that a large enough group of fans absolutely has to have it, no matter the cost or annoyance of obtaining it. If I were an entrepreneur with an entertainment bent, I’d be looking to find audiences that are exceptionally passionate about something and don’t have a place to watch/listen to that something. (How did that work out for Twitch?)
If I were a content distributor – no matter how huge and seemingly all-powerful (hello, ESPN) – I’d be looking for ways to partner with similar distributors in order to create product packages that my consumers will pony up for. If I were an MVPD, I’d realize that customers are slipping more comfortably into the driver’s seat every day, and I’d spend less time trying to maximize dollar spend per customer and far more time trying to maximize customer experience.
For Broadcasters, Vulnerability Occasionally Trumps Our Passion
Broadcasters – and, as we were reminded today, not just the ones who you see on-screen or hear on-mic – go out into the public every minute of every day to interact with both their viewers/listeners/fans and with people who either don’t know who they are or who do know who they are and are decidedly not fans of their work. In radio, we talk about being live without a net, and what we typically mean is that we don’t get to say, “Cut! Let’s try that again.”
But it also means that we go out in public not knowing what bizarre danger may be waiting for us. Remember that the next time you see a “wacky” YouTube video of some jackass messing with a reporter who is live (and therefore at their most vulnerable). The reporter is trying to do a job with utmost professionalism while they’re left wondering if their safety is at risk. Sometimes it is.
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