Executive Networking & Technology Group ExecTec of LA

ExecTec on the State of Media

Oct '09 27 Tue 7:30 PM

Location: D'Amore's Pizza Connection on Westwood

1136 Westwood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 208-7077

How to find us
"We are in the back at the large wooden table."

Attendance: 5 people attended.
5.001 (1 ratings)
Who organized?
Joel Ordesky
Price: $21.00 if paid before event
refund policy

ExecTec member Marty Meyer wrote the following in her email blast this AM:

Sometimes I read too much. Or, maybe it's just the wrong stuff. It's like watching a car wreck. It's just hard not to look at the carnage on the side of the road.

This morning I saw an article in Advertising Age that reported that the nation's top media companies only managed to eke out a .08% revenue growth in 2008 AND that in the first half of 2009 revenue fell 4.3% as compared to last year. See the carnage?

This article claims that this is the first decline since they began ranking media firms in 1981, which, coincidentally, is the fashion decade that we are reliving this year. How do you feel about Dynasty and big shoulders?

Eleven of last year's "Media 100" firms are now in re-org or bankruptcy. Print media failures dominated the list (my husband is reading everything on his Kindle). The venerable Gourmet magazine is shutting its doors. We'll have to read People at the check-stand now.

Top performers are cable network and satellite TV. Comcast seems to be the big winner here, displacing Time Warner as the largest media company, a spot that they held since 1995. If that sounds like good news, wait just a sec. Primetime viewership of ad supported cable networks is basically flat, as compared to last year. Does nobody watch TV anymore?

What really bothers me is that all this means that there are fewer ad dollars being spent which means less/cheaper content being produced which means less work which means less consumer spending and more handwringing. I'm chaffed.
So it would seem that while content is king, content creation is becoming a looser's business.

Perhaps there is just to much content and while ever expanding resources is said to be good for a capitalistic economy, limitless content is harming the media business.

Some say this is all about how one monetizes the content but more and more as Marty points out the tried and true media firms are discovering that what worked in the past is not working now.

Shelly Palmer in a post last week pointed out that a recent debate between Steven Brill, Cofounder, Journalism Online and Vivian Schiller, CEO of NPR at the Paley Center for Media was a kin to listening to two people on the Titanic argue about the music the band was playing while they were loading the lifeboats.

As Shelly points out there are only three business models: I pay, you pay or someone else pays. Now of course there are a lot of different ways to pay and be paid but perhaps one of the keys to not being a victim in the media business is to figure out not only what the audience wants but how they are willing to pay for it.

So come join us for a discussion of what is working and not working in the media business.

As always, there is no better way to meet and connect with other executives then over dinner and conversation. $21 in advance via PayPal or $25 at the event gets you a full dinner, drink and the best networking around.