Category: Media

News consumption is the addition of the masses. As mobile penetration has risen, the consumption habits have changed. Users do not visit the homepages of the news sites. Instead, they prefer links and media apps. These links we could see on the social media. While consuming news, the users prefer video content, zoomable pictures, interactive data and charts, podcasts. This has proved disruptive. FB runs a basic light version for minimal data   transfer. It is called FB Lite. Internet.org is a partnership with telecom operators who offer free connectivity. FB’s third initiative is Instant Articles ( IA ) which is a partnership between FB and media organisations. Here content from the media partners will be available on FB. The ad revenues  will be split. The algorithm will decide what will show up in individual news feeds. There are going to be competitors to rival FB in the digital space.

As you are aware, Apple dominated the download music market. However, of late, the listening habits are changing fast. The trend of streaming music is catching up, and the downloads are dropping. The activity happens in ad supported streaming, e.g. YouTube and Spotify free version. But still the revenues growth comes from paid subscription services. At present, Apple makes money from music downloads everyday that far exceeds the revenue the digital music industry makes in a month. This means that rivalling Spotify and Pandora is not a top priority for Apple. However, that does not mean Apple can be complacent about the new trend.

To Apple, music is a complementary product to sell its iPhones. It prevents its customers from using the other devices.

Apple might go in for a free trial service for its streaming service. It may put an act togethter by stitching its disparate parts such as iTunes, Pandora radio service, Beats which has streaming service. The question is how many subscribers will be ready to pay up once the service is priced. The service can be sustainable if a base of 100 million paid subscribers is created. Apple can be rope in its iTune users to contribute to this.

Amish Tripathi wrote a novel The Immortals of Meluha in 2010. He is an IIM alumus. He sampled his first chapter at all bookstores and made a movie trailer for the book and uploaded it on YouTube. In 2011, he wrote The Secret of the Nagas. Together, both the novels have sold over a million copies. Karan Johar has acquired the rights to adapt The Immortals for the big screen. This has inspired many MBAs to become novelists. His third book is Vayuputras.

Tarunai is the digital magazine which can be downloaded for free. It composes short fiction and articles on the festival, sports, technology and finance. There are supplementary applications that include topics like the history of Diwali traditions, faraal recipes, safety measures to be adopted during celebrations and an array of digital greeting cards. Unique Features, Pune has created an audio ank aimed at teenagers. The director of www.maayboli.com puts Maayboli magazine online consisting of audio and video recordings. Audio and video can play a significant role in enriching a Diwali ank. Though there is no substitute for traditional print magazines, these is a need to keep engaging with a more tech savvy readership.

Online journalism is different, operates faster, and is more efficient than print and broadcast journalism. Each article can be evaluated through audience metrics. The team has to track the breaking news and produce top quality SEO-enriched content. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. There are updates on an hourly or minute-by-minute basis. The key words that are trending are incorporated into either the headline or the initial few paras of the article. The content that incorporates key words draws traffic to your site. Reporters become content-providers and editors manage the content. Commentators primarily write for search engines.

New media art is a body of artworks that innovate and experiment with non-traditional mediums, say digital art, graphics, video, animation, interactive art, avant garde performance art. Artists move beyond the painted image to rach out to a larger audience. They may work between media, say video and sculpture, internet and painting etc. New media has no fixed definition in today’s climate of constant change. New media is generally associated with video. However, this is not new media. In new media the protagonist is the technology. What is done in the medium is at the cutting edge of technology.

Broadway is the principal theatre district of Manhattan.West End, London is also well-known. At Broadway, there are large theatres with large stages, huge audience capacity. The production is state-of-the-art. These theatres stage commercial musicals. This has been going on for over a century. These musicals are complete entertainment for the whole family. They are spectacular. In India, we too are adopting the Broadway-style theatre, e.g. Zangoora  completed 1000 shows in June, 2013. A number of international musical hits are being showcased in India.

Some plays use LED screens on stage. The picture on the screens are changed. The backgrounds look lavish. The audience appreciates this. This is a visual generation. The Indian theatre is coming of age.

The journalistic equivalent of corporate world’s breakthrough or innovation is the concept of integrated newsroom. These days people browse the Internet, keep news channels running to keep an eye on the flashes/tickers, scan Facebook walls and Twitter timelines and reach the links for interesting news. They also read articles in the magazines and newspapers. All these activities, say a bit of everything ! On similar lines, a newsroom must do a bit of everything if it has to retain its relevance. Instead, it has to do a lot of everything. Traditionally, separate teams were hired to do each of this function. One team to run the print media, another for videos and a third to take care of the websites. This was not economical. These days in integrated newsrooms, there are a few specialists — visual editors, graphic artists who provide specialised services to a large number of reporters and editors, working across the media. A software that seamlessly connects these multiple services and provide files for the print is welcome. These days the stories are broken on the website and are updated constantly. The analysis too accompanies a story. Social media are extensively used. There is widespread use of multimedia, including video. People can access this on muliple devices — phones, tablets through applications and website. A newspaper is an outcome of all these activities in the last 12 hours or 18 hours. All this is done without compromising journalistic integrity.

Integrated newsrooms for both the traditional and new media have been around for quite sometime. News is consumed first on digital devices. Consumer action happens here. Media companies work on mobile first or web first philosophy. Print players have forayed into digital media. The world is changing. Print journalism has to evolve. Writing in real time is couched in different language — different from the language that is used for the next morning reading. It is not just a change in technology. It is a change in working habits and timing too. The newsroom of future will be less and less like the newsroom of the past.

May 13, 2015. Facebook commences hosting articles from news organisations. Facebook and publishers had long and delicate negotiations prior to this. What has begun as a bunch of few instant articles will soon expand to cover more. Theses articles will load faster. In fact, Facebook has gone to great lengths to woo the publishers. To begin, the negotiations had succeeded with nine publishers such as New York Times, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild. These articles will carry ads. The revenue will either go wholly to the publisher or will be shared between Facebook and publisher in proportion of 30: 70. The publishers can track the readers who read these articles, using the conventional tools they use to analyse traffic to their site. As print media is being assaulted by the electronic media, this is a way out for them. The social network has 1.4 billion users, and captures attention of the cell phone users. As the audience is shifting to digital media, there is no alternative to such collaboration. This by itself is also a threat. The audience  may tend to forget the original media which provides the content, and may make Facebook itself as a destination. This may slowly erode their own traffic–both of advertising and readers. in other words, the use of social media may mean losing control over the distribution.