The media business is in a real pickle right now. Audience and attention are all time highs, advertising is falling to record lows.
For print - content creation is easier, but hard to get visual photographs next to stories without people taking risks in the world. Subscription print revenues are going up, but hopefully the economy can sustain that. Ad rates are plummeting since advertisers aren’t making $$
For video - attention and usage are at all time highs. Subscription video with large premium catalogs are doing quite well. But creating new content is next to impossible for a while. Everything coming off the shelf.
Ad rates for the rest of Video media are plummeting. No one is spending brand dollars since customers aren’t spending on brands much right now. Sports is off too which centered a lot of ads. Live content creation is incredibly hard too - nearly all remote.
Audio is in a weird spot too. Podcasts and Radio had a lot of audience when people commuted, were at gym. None of those are happening. Easy enough to create content remotely but fewer listeners.
For anyone to really thrive and it through, they will need to turn this increased audience and attention into subscribers. And that banks on people being willing to pay for the content they love. Even FB/Insta, Google/YouTube, etc will all be hit by this ad plummet
This is going to end up a much bigger reshuffling of media than I had thought even a few weeks ago.
Whether or not Quibi works, it is the model of things that can - subscription based, unique content, new form factor. Though mobile is less relevant at the moment since we can watch on bigger screens
This definitely centers the power back to anyone who has already been driving subscriptions...
