Category Archives: Media & Culture

Is the advertising pie big enough?

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I’ve wondered about this but not as thoughtfully as Ben Compaine, who posts on the Rebuilding Media blog:

Can the media survive on advertising? Lots of folks are counting on it. Broadcasters have always had this single revenue stream. Daily newspapers get about 80% of revenue from advertising and the hot print properties, such as the give-away Metro dailies, depend about 100% on advertising. Now much of the Web is counting on advertising: Google, Yahoo! and increasingly AOL to name just a few of the biggies.

Either the pie gets bigger or somebody gets a smaller slice.

Lance Armstrong to come out of retirement?

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Lance Armstrong says he could come out of retirement to try for an eighth straight Tour de France victory.

“I’m thinking it’s the best way to piss [the French] off. I’m not willing to put a percentage on the chances but I will no longer rule it out.”

Armstrong believes he is the target of a “witch hunt” by the French media. French sports daily L’Equipe reported in August that urine samples taken from Armstrong during his first Tour victory in 1999 tested positive for the banned substance EPO.

Jeff Jarvis: Don’t own the content. Don’t own distribution

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Another thought-provoking post by Jeff Jarvis on the “value” of owning content or distribution:

Owning the printing press, broadcast tower, cable plant, movie theater, or chain of stores is a cost burden when your competitors and customers can, without friction, effort or cost, bypass your distribution and even your marketing. So don’t own the content. Help people make and find and remake and recommend and save the content they want. Don’t own the distribution. Gain the trust of the people to help them use whatever distribution and medium they like to find what they want. It’s hard for somone raised on the value of owning content and owning distribution to let go of exclusivity and instead value openness and participation.

I’ve been blogging long enough to buy into the idea of the web as a conversation but it’s a damned hard concept to explain. Much easier to grasp the idea of producing programming (content)…pumping it over some kind of distribution channel (radio/TV signal, newspaper, etc)…mixing in some ads…and feeding it all to the consumer (audience).

Online salaries higher than in other media

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Online publishing salaries of recent graduates are higher than broadcast or print media salaries, according to the 2004 Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication Graduates (PDF) conducted by The University of Georgia’s James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research.

The survey found that the median online publishing salary in 2004 was $32,000. By comparison, the median salary for TV was $23,492; for cable TV was $30,000; for daily newspapers was $26,000; for weekly newspapers was $24,000; for radio was $23,000; and for consumer magazines was $27,000. [CyberJournalist.net]

Of all the challenges facing my beloved radio these days, that median salary of $23,000 might be the most frightening.