Diane Mermigas: New rules of play

Diane Mermigas, contributing editor to the Hollywood Reporter (and, IMHO as a long-time reader, the most astute media reporter/analyst writing for the commercial media), is speaking.  Beginning with a riff on Socrates, she said, "This must be our time of wonder.  This is media's industrial revolution."  More notes follow.

New rules of play:

• The power of user-generated content cannot be underestimated.
• Understanding and catering to the empowered consumer
• It's all about interactivity.
• The internet has created new communities at one end and new individual opportunities at the other out in front of the marketplace before you get beaten by it.
• Experiment.
• Collaborate.  This an age about strategic alliances.
• Think outside the box (the TV set in our case).
• Know and redefine your brands.
• Be willing to blow up your old business model in order to invest in new ones.  Use short-term investments to refine.  It's OK to make money.
• The technology allows for and demands new click-through metrics.
• Reach out to your grassroots creators.
• Understand your strengths and then build on them.

Public broadcasting's to do list:

• Rethink your value proposition and business model
• Know who the new consumer is
• Make a timeline for short term and then long term goals using existing resources
• Reassess and reassign values for your content and services
• Know who your public broadcasting consumer is in this sea change
• Understand the new ways that new technologies allow for marketing and promotion
• Know and appreciate the value of your brands in this noisy world
• Revitalize relationships with underwriters/sponsors and anyone else who seeks a safe haven
• PBS: revitalize and redefine your relationship with your individual TV stations

By the most important measures, she says, public broadcasting is in a very enviable position.

Pointed to a book by Peter Morville called Ambient Findability: "The wealth of information we have today corresponds to a poverty of attention."  Consumers can't use what they can't find.  Malcolm Gladwell, "The Tipping Point."  The point at which the unexpected becomes the expected.  Dick Parsons (AOL) in his last quarterly call:  "Shame on us if we can't make this thing work."

--Dennis Haarsager

Comments

[Diane Mermigas]

Dennis:
Thank you for your kind words. The pleasure was all mine.
Regards,
Diane Mermigas